Breastfeeding Question for Breastfeeding Moms
FlMarriedCpl
member
So my wife has been wanting to breastfeed our newborn who is only a week old. The first couple days in the hospital, though the baby was latching on and doing something, it seemed that she would still fuss and go crazy after my wife thought she was done.
We then noticed that, besides a couple meconium poops, she was not having any bowel movements. The day we took her home was a wreck with feeding. It was obvious she was not getting any food now because she would latch onto my wife's breast for a long time, fall asleep and the minute we put her down she'd start fussin and making all the baby 'I'm hungry" motions.
Finally, my wife caved and said we should supplement a little formula until we got the feeding down. Like magic, after the first bottle, she was super content and even had a normal bowel movement not long later.
My wife still was having doubts about breastfeeding so we went to a specialist. She showed us how to tell if she was swallowing anything, took her weight before and after a feeding, gave us tips and told us to rent a hospital grade pump to help stimulate my wifes milk.
The first day with this machine it was really pumping well and we noticed the baby would latch on longer and swallow more. But here comes my question, its been three days and we noticed that our LO feeds between both breasts for almost an hour now..that includes her passing out, us stimulating her awake and getting her to keep going. We were giving here a small amount of forumla too, per the DR until we know shes getting enough, but we notice now that after the formula she spits it up a few minutes later. Is that because she's getting plenty of breastmilk now and her stomach is full? Also, the past day, it seems like the pump is getting nothing now out of my wife. Yet the baby still feeds for a long time and seems content and passes out on my wife. Is this because she is finally getting plenty of milk from her breasts? We did notice they are very soft now.
Sorry for the rambling..just wanted to know other experiences or get input from other experts on this.
Thanks
Re: Breastfeeding Question for Breastfeeding Moms
If your wife continues to pump she will end up with an ovesupply which is a headache in itself - trust me. Any milk she gets from the pump now is "extra".If she continues to pump she will tell her body that the amount your child is getting is not enough and the result will be to make more milk (sounds great -- but dealing with an oversupply can be painful and time consuming). If the amount of wed/ soiled diapers is good - I would stop pumping, stop supplementing and just enjoy nursing.
You also might want to check out this website: https://kellymom.com/
It has a lot of good information about breast feeding and is a great resource to answer questions you may have.
that sounds pretty normal to me, my so would average 45mins to an hour when he was a neborn and still has the occasional marathon nursing sessions that last an hour.
As long as your daughter is having a normal # of dirty/wet diapers, it sounds like breastfeeding is going well
~Fitness Blog~
At that age, my baby was on the breast constantly. It's not necessarily a bad thing, because that kind of cluster feeding is telling the breasts to produce more milk. The sleepiness was frustrating, but for me, it got better when I let her sleep as much as she wanted and feed on demand rather than waking her every two hours to feed. Weighing you LO every couple of days can help you reassure yourself, as with counting diapers. Consulting a lactation consultant isn't a bad idea if your LO isn't gaining weight.
This is why people say breastfeeding is hard! Doubt and confusion is pretty normal, albeit scary, in the early days. In my experience, it got better after a couple weeks. After about six weeks, I finally felt like I actually had a handle on the whole thing. Good luck!