Mumsnet Breastfeeding Club

[Llondbol]

Hi!

I can't find a thread for breastfeeding chat; so thought I'd start one.

I'm a new Mum to Jac (10/4/19) and he's my first baby. I haven't made it to a local breastfeeding group yet, so would love the chance to chat here. It was a difficult start and I still have so many questions...

Anyone want to join? Introduce yourself - I'd love to hear from you 😁

June are you doing paced bottle feeding with the formula (or ebm also)?

Got the nipple cream, expressing every 2 hours or so and get about 175ml each time she just demolishes it all so we use formula too if I haven't got any expressed or not enough for her. Guna keep expressing for now but feeling much less pain and stress now just expressing. Will see how we go! I had a csection too and baby was in special care for 24hrs, milk was not my priority. Dont know what difference that makes x

So up until now I thought we had bfing down: M is gaining like a champ (12.5lbs at last weigh in two weeks ago, birth weight 8lbs 3oz) and generally a happy, settled baby, although he spits up alot. But the last week or so he seems to be struggling to latch and spitting up a lot more. My post today has been prompted by him not letting me put him down at all, he just cries. Is he in pain? I'm at a loss tbh. He's currently sleeping on my chest and I'm wondering if he actually does have reflux and I'm missing it or if our latch has actually been awful from the beginning and I'm just deluding myself that everything is fine because he's gaining weight. How much spit up is normal? What were / are your bf babies poos like? His are yellow and gooey and he does them every two days or so. He went through a stage of struggling to get them out but now seems fine. Aah so many questions.

June is that with paced bottle feeding yeah? I had csections ds1 was in scbu for 5 days, he gained OK at first, slowish for the first few weeks and then gained brilliantly but interestingly when I had ds2 by cs too he never lost any weight and gained at an unbelievable rate even with tongue tie, so cs/scbu might make a difference but milk isn't in until days 3-5 so in this instance I wouldn't have thought it would.

Lookingatthings my ds2 was a projectile puker for months on and off, turns out he had posterior tongue tie which would've caused a lot of it but once or twice it ramped up out of nowhere and it turned out to be a bug of some sort which usually passed in a few days. He threw up incredible volumes, he could easily cover a 4 ft radius on the floor boak

Hi all, DD is 2 days old today. EBF so far, quickly progressed to having yellowish stools and has had around 4/5 dirty nappies since being born at 11am on Wednesday but doesn't seem to feed a great deal during the day. She seems really sleepy. I don’t let her go any longer than 3 hours without a feed but sometimes she just isn’t interested.

Last night was our first night back at home and she slept from 11:30-2:30 and then fed on and off from 2:30-5:30. She fed fairly frequently this morning, maybe every 1.5-2 hours but never for any longer than 15/20 minutes.

I feel as though I’m failing already, I can see she’s starting to get jaundice, am worrying about not having enough wet and dirty nappies etc.

I’m also starting the beginning of what I suspect is the baby blues. It’s half term and DD (5) is badgering me to hold the baby all the time which I know is lovely but it’s driving me nuts! Constantly wanting to stroke and cuddle etc. Which is fine but she’s getting right in my space and all I want to do is bat her away which is horrible because she’s being so lovely but I’m having all on not to snap at her.

I think that sounds reasonable amount during the day. My 5 week old still sleeps most of day just wakes up every 2-3 hours for a feed, a bum change and we are starting to get the odd awake time where we can have a chat and a play. Feeding sounds right in terms of time they say as long as it’s more than 5 minutes I think!!

Half term is hard I have a 7 yr old and he’s been amazing as we really haven’t done much but I have to stop myself from snapping a lot - think it’s the tiredness!!

Good luck !!

@Iswallowtoothpaste
I think it's natural to worry at this point about number of nappies and lengths of feeds. I did exactly the same.
Is your midwife worried at all?

Do you have support in real life. Someone who can take your older one out for an out or so?

Anyone got advice on finding time to express at work?

Really struggling to carve out 2 x 20 minutes sessions in my day (sacrificing lunch time) but I’m now worrying I’m damaging supply!

@avocadoincident we ended up having to supplement with formula. We drove 30 miles for an appointment in the next town to get her weighed on Saturday. She’d lost over a pound since being born and they were wanting to admit her to hospital.

I had the most unsympathetic, patronising, unhelpful midwife ever who quickly skimmed through a breastfeeding plan then said ‘basically just read that and do what it says.’ I completely freaked out, lost all confidence and bought a box of formula. I’m still BF and would like to think that I’ll be able to EBF again sometime but we’ll hsve to see.

@Iswallowtoothpaste

I'm sorry you've had such unsupportive professionals around you.

You can easily get back to EBF if that's what you want. Have faith in your supply, every formula bottle you use is telling your body to produce less of your own milk so as you drop the bottles the body will catch up.

Also lots of skin to skin time to encourage supply.

@Iswallowtoothpaste sorry to read your update. But supplementing with formula isn’t the end of breastfeeding, we’re still doing it.

Have you got any groups or support to help identify why baby isn’t getting enough milk from you? Breast compressions during a feed can help keep the milk flowing. If baby is sleepy then striping off and relatching can help.

We used to do a feed then introduce 60ml of formula at the early stages. And I quickly begun to express some milk so would do 20-30ml of milk then 30ml of formula. But that was an agreed plan after a consultation with an IBLC (NHS). Can you ask for a referral to the hospital infant feeding team?

And congratulations on your baby, I hope you got some sleep during half term!