My heart goes out to you. I really struggled with feeding my daughter when she was born and went through such lows with it that it really has coloured my memories of her early months. I wanted to breastfeed her and was determined to do it, but I wish they’d tell you that it doesn’t necessarily happen instantly. I did not feel like it was working for me until she was about four months old. I’ve put my experience below - I don’t know if it will be helpful or not but please take what you want from it.
My baby was born via c-section. No one tells you that can really affect feeding initially. The night she was born she would not latch at all and was sleepy. A midwife in the hospital pretty much force fed her a bottle of formula. By the time we left hospital (and I was in for a week following my section) I couldn’t get her to latch for more than a couple of minutes.
When I came out I was told by the midwives to triple feed, so was expressing, trying and mostly failing at breastfeeding and giving formula top ups. Because there were concerns about DDs weight she was being weighed every other day and each time we’d see a different midwife at the clinic who would tell us a different amount of formula to top her up with as if they were plucking random numbers out of the air.
I found expressing really difficult. Neither breast yielded much, one more then the other.
The first few weeks when I wanted to be cosily nesting with my baby was just a hellish never ending cycle of futile expressing, washing up bottles and trying to breastfeed a very hungry baby. The cycle of triple feeding and recovering from a c-section just broke me. My husband and I were so miserable that we had a discussion about giving up on breastfeeding entirely and just giving DD formula. As a FTM I was just blithely following the advice of the midwives at the weighing clinic, and it just made me feel like I was a failure. One of them told me that if I wasnt able to breastfeed DD from each breast for half an hour by the time of her next weight check she would readmit her to hospital. At two weeks it was finally discovered that she also had a tongue tie!
Around the same time, a friend put me in touch with a lady who runs a breastfeeding group locally to me. I had a chat with her and she told me straight away to give up expressing milk. As she put it - “no machine will ever give what you can give your baby.” She told me just to go bed and stay there, put the baby in my nightie, concentrate on skin to skin and just let her feed as much as I could manage whilst carrying on with the top ups. I think she understood that I’d never really got a chance just to “be” with my baby.
Having the tongue tie cut and stopping expressing milk made massive difference to everything. From that point on I relaxed a bit and gave formula top ups and I breastfed. I really thought I’d cracked it. However DD’s weight was still not tracking along the percentile line. At this point our HV referred us to the breastfeeding service. The breastfeeding coach that came out to us told me to stop topping up after every breastfed but instead to give the top ups as two or three larger feeds during the day. That helped massively as it freed me up to focus on breastfeeding the rest of the time. She also showed me how to do breast compressions which helped DD take more. By this stage I’d become fixated on getting DD off formula as I was determined to EBF. She reframed my thinking entirely by telling me that my baby was EBF, she just got a couple of extra drinks every day. DD was about three months old by this point and realised that her tongue tie had reattached. This was cut again.
I also saw a private lactation consultant during this time who honestly gave me nothing useful, and I really wish I’d not spent the £100 I did on her.
By the time DD was four months we’d finally got into a rhythm and now she feeds really well. She has just turned a year and I am still breastfeeding her.
Another thing that massively helped was seeing a chiropractor who specialises in paediatrics. I think it’s called cranial osteopathy. He worked wonders on my daughter. He told me that when babies are tongue tied it affects the biomechanics of their jaws. He basically got her jaw working and her digestion working properly and that helped the feeding exponentially.
Other suggestions are making sure you eat lots and well. Oats are good as is fenugreek.
Whatever you decide to do, will be the right thing. It’s ok to decide to stop if that’s what you want to do and it’s ok to carry on if you want to. I’ve carried on combi feeding and it’s worked really well, but I still remember the hurt I felt in those early days which now seems so unnecessary. Sending you a massive hug.