Hi I am a very tired mum of a 15 wk old gorgeous boy. Please excuse my incoherance I just want to get the facts down and start getting some advice. Havent much time to type so if you respond and i dont answer straight away i will get back here eventually. Please help!!
I have been exlusively breastfeeding up to around 12 weeks. We tried him on a bottle of expressed milk which he takes very well from about 3 weeks. We tried to give him an expressed milk feed once a week just to keep him in the habit of drinking from a bottle. HOwever I was finding it such a complete faff and very time consuming to express milk so we stopped doing it as much. During this time I was eating really healthily and doing tons of walking and have lost weight. I now weigh about half a stone less than i did before finding out i was pregnant. I am sick of people telling me that my milk quality is too poor and that is why ds not sleeping well. I get lots of neg comments all the time from mother in law, sisters in law, mother and my own sister. They are all telling me my little ds is hungry and that is why he is not sleeping. So we introduced a bottle of formula milk before his bedtime at 7. It has made no difference whatsoever to his sleeping. Now they are all going on at me to try baby rice. I dont want to wean my baby early!!!! But they are all making me feel like i am starving him!! He is between the 5th and 9th centiles on chart, but is all in proportion. Health visitor keeps good check on his weights/measurements etc and says he is doing fine. He consistenly gains weight even if it is only a small amount. I know the government guidelines are to wait 6mths. I want to wait 6mths. I also want to continue to bf for as long as i can. But the constant pressure from other people is really getting me down. Everyone seems to think that he needs to " progress" on to formula and that my milk is no longer enough for him. I am feeling like a complete failure. We introduced a bottle in hope of him sleeping longer but it has made no difference. Am I expecting too much in wanting him to sleep longer? he goes to sleep beautifully every evening at 7, and regularly sleeps till about 12- 1am. Sometimes he wakes at 10.30 for a feed but not all the time. The problem is after hes woken for the 1 o clock he is awake every half hour / hour or so. I am rubbish at leaving him to cry, i just cant bear it. Sometimes he is placated with his dummy or a bit of face stroking, other times its pick up and feed. However he is not going back to sleep for any length of time before wakening and crying again. By the time I get to 6-6.30 am I am so exhausted as I have been up nearly all night. Because Im getting up to feed and my dh is at work Im the one getting up all the time.
Should I carry on with the formula before he goes to bed? is it worth it? would b/f be better? Pls reassure (if it is the case) that i am doing the best thing for my little boy. I just need someone to say im doing ok.