Formula Feeding
TugboatSheila
member
intro and why I let my boobs dry up
TugboatSheila
member
Hi Everyone,
I have a 4 week old son, named Felix and about a week ago we switched to completely FF.
My baby was born and had no idea how to suck out of anything, the boob least of all so we had to teach him how to do that. My colostrum didn't even come in until day 3 PP and my milk came in at day 7 PP. Essentially the first day of his life he was starving because not a single drop of anything got into his mouth. I tried BFing every two hours but nothing came out. They tested his blood sugar in the morning on day 2 pp and found that it had dropped really low and asked me if I was ok with giving him formula. I didn't care, I just wanted him to eat because he was clearly reallly hungry and his food was not coming from me.
We began "supplementing" with formula and teaching him how to eat. I started pumping every 2-3 hours on Day 2 and bottle feeding him whatever my boobs would produce. Which was almost nothing. My nipples, turns out were flat and shitty for BFing.
We tried the nipple shield, I took Fenugreek, I called my OB who told me about ensuring I was sleeping, eating good fats, drinking lots of water etc. I followed her advice. Fenugreek did next to nothing for my supply. A good pump session gave me 50 ML. And that only happened MAYBE once a day. I called a Lactation Consultant who told me everything I had already tried and then she started talking about medicines.
I am on Zyrtec. Apparently in some women this dries up your milk supply. I am one of those women. She told me to go off of it and see what happened but it was likely my supply would never build up. It didn't. It got worse and I got depressed.
I cried about this every single day (almost every time I was alone in a room) and I was getting more and more depressed about my shitty boobs and their shitty output. But I did feel better once we found out why.
I was faced with pumping every 2-3 hours for infinity and only getting an ounce or slightly more to give him and it was exhausting and really bad for me mentally to be working so hard with so little output.
Pumping was fine and would do it again for a future child but I just couldn't handle the little return I was getting.
So we switched to formula and while I still feel THE GUILT I also feel like some huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It only took a day for my boobs to dry up but I am so much happier and not depressed anymore. I would love to try again for my second child and can now avoid Zyrtec but my LO is thriving on Similac Sensitive. I feel good that he got every drop of colostrum my body made and as much BM as I could giving him but enough was enough.
So, thanks for reading my story and I hope to give support to all the other FFers out there (and BFers, I mean I'm no sanctimommy).
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Re: intro and why I let my boobs dry up