Exclusively pumping breast milk

[SquashPenguin]

Firstly sorry if I'm this is under the wrong topic, I wasn't sure where else to post it.

My 8wk old baby was born via emergency section at 40+4 and taken to SCBU, where she was tube fed for several days. We were in hospital for six days, and not at any point did anyone ask about breastfeeding once her tube came out. I tried by myself and she just wouldn't latch. They just gave us formula and we were sent on our way, despite me desperately wanting to breast feed her.

Not until the health visitor came was her tongue tie noticed. I've been pumping as much as I can and we had her tongue tie snipped about two weeks ago. She still will not latch on. I am completely exhausted from pumping, I just can't keep it up enough. She has 2- 3 formula feeds at night, but I physically can't keep doing this anymore. I feel so let down, I read posts about women on maternity wards having help from midwives or even the offer to pump milk with hospital pumps for babies in special care and I didn't experience any of that.

I've been diagnosed PTSD from what happened when she was born. Breastfeeding was so important to me but only pumping instead is basically just shit. I wrongly thought that whilst her birth was so far from ideal that at least I would have this as something I could control but I don't. My supply is starting to drop because it's so impractical. I feel so guilty but I'm only managing 3-4 times a day now instead of the 8 times I started out with. It doesn't work if I want to leave the house for any amount of time, or visit people. It makes me feel so sad and I feel like giving up despite it being so early on. Everyone I know breastfed till their babies were at least six months old. Has anyone else tried to exclusively pump and managed it?

I had a similar experience (25 years ago,). I expressed breast milk for 3 months before giving up but I had to supplement with increasing amount of formula.
It is disappointing and I remember being very upset at the time. But he grew to be 6'4" tall, very healthy with no allergies.
So don't worry, your lovely baby daughter will be fine.

That sounds incredibly hard. Exclusively pumping long-term is really difficult, although a hospital-grade pump is pretty helpful.

It completely depends what you want the outcome to be. If you want to breastfeed directly (which is not possible or desirable for everyone and no judgement what you choose) then: get a private lactation consultant to come and spend some time with you and baby working on latch, attend any breastfeeding cafe type things near you and take your baby to bed with you during the day for several days without your top on doing skin to skin and having the breast available at all times. Get partner/helpful people to bring you food, water, lactation tea (also recommend Boobix cookies) and try to relax, rest when baby is sleeping etc. Get multimam compresses, lanolin etc for sore nipples. Give it a week maybe and if you’re not getting anywhere then can you give yourself permission to not breastfeed? Maybe get some therapy to support you? I have a number of friends who weren’t able to breastfeed and some have really struggled to come to terms with it and have a lot of shame, therapy has helped.

It’s also completely fine to decide you’re done, don’t want to try anything new or keep pumping and want to use formula.

If continuing to pump is what you want then it will help to have a hospital grade pump, lots of rest, lots of water, lots of calories, nursing tea etc and you might also want to seek out some support for pumping mothers - online or in person. La Leche League and Kellymom have resources - Google “Kellymom exclusive pumping” or similar.

You’re doing amazingly and I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult start.

My eldest who is now 11 wouldn’t feed when she was born. And that was without any of the additional challenges you’ve had at the start. So I was doing a lot of pumping, but even with the hospital grade double pump that we rented it was still hard to get a really great amount of milk out. We cracked it with nipple shields. My mother-in-law was with us and she’s a lactation specialist. I’m sure you’ve heard that the official advice is always not to use them before six weeks because of nipple confusion. But we really had tried everything and she said we might as well see and she was really surprised to see that they worked and did get my daughter breastfeeding successfully. We were able to stop using them after a week or two and she went on to feed for a long time. So that might be something to try. Try at the start of each feed, stroke your child’s cheek to encourage them to suck. And don’t assume because you’re getting a low yield with pumping that you won’t have enough milk. There are lots of us who have fed successfully, but if you look at how much milk we got out from pumping you’d think our babies would have been starving. I’m sorry that you feel your start to breastfeeding has been less than ideal. You don’t always get great advice in the hospital so don’t worry too much that you’ve missed out. I know I would not have managed it had on my MIL not been a specialist, and we barely made it even with that. We rented a hospital grade pump, that’s also something you could look into if you want to keep pumping while you try different options. A lot of pharmacies rent them out. There are normally things like breastfeeding cafes that you can drop into that have specialists to help there. I went to one with my third child when struggling, so it’s not always straightforward even when you’ve done it before. But also, if it ends up not working out, you haven’t let your baby down in any way, you’ve done your absolute best to get there and should be really proud of that. One of my best friends had a really rocky start with her first and tried literally everything and was really killing herself about wanting to breastfeed him but in the end did have to give up. She subsequently fed her second with no problems, but now they’re both that bit older she looks at them and says I can’t remember what I was so worried and upset about. But I know at the time it can seem like everything.

I could have written bits of this myself - my birth and postnatal experience were different to yours but I was really hard on myself about breastfeeding. I really wanted to do it and assumed it'd be fine but it definitely wasn't. Baby and I really struggled with it, it would sometimes take her an hour of trying before she'd actually stay on, she'd twist and tug and I was finding it so painful. I was getting really down about it so I expressed instead but that's hard in its own way. I expressed for 3.5 months in total, but in the end I was only doing it twice a day, having initially aimed for 8 times like you. Baby was a contact napper and it often meant I was expressing instead of cuddling or interacting properly with her. She's nearly 6 months, she's thriving, I'm so much happier and I barely think about breastfeeding anymore. The guilt I did feel over it has gone already.

If you do want to keep going, is there an infant feeding team where you are? I believe there's one in every maternity hospital. They could lend you a hospital grade pump to get your supply up.

For what it's worth, I don't think breastfeeding is really something you can control. Some people have a really easy time and others don't. You've had a really difficult time as it is but just remember that regardless of what your baby is fed, she will be loved and she will thrive.

I had a very similar birth experience and tried to pump. I hired the hospital grade pump, was pumping every 3-4 hours for weeks. DS also tongue tied, we went to cranial osteopathy, saw a lactation consultant, followed all the jelly mom rules, changed my diet, took medication to increase supply etc etc... Pumping limited my social interaction - needed to be by the pump every few hours. It was so stressful and made my depression worse. I really didn't enjoy the early weeks at all. I wish someone had said to me sooner that's it's ok to stop.

It's ok to stop. Formula is fine. You'll still be bonded to your baby. You love your baby and you're doing a great job. You need to look after yourself so that you can do the best by baby. Whatever you choose will be the right thing. Good luck.