Dd is now 11 days old. When she was born she was 8lbs 6 oz. my milk came in on day 2 and on day 3 she weighed 7lb 15 oz. day 5 she weighed 8lbs. weights were taken in midwife scale.
My next midwife appt is on day 14. With my first baby she was a slow gainer and I ended up being referred to a paediatrician, going to breastfeeding clinics etc. so I am super concerned about checking her weight. I took her To my family doc yesterday and she weighed 7 lb 15 oz. the nurse thought that her latch might be off and also that she might not be getting the hind milk. She has lots of wet and poopy diapers, but just isnt putting on weight. I have put a call into the le leche group and I am waiting to hear back from them. In the intern I have started taking, herbs, drinking the milk tea, and I am trying to keep the baby on the breast more which works out to ever hr to 1.5 hrs. Before she was nursing 10 min then falling asleep. I am now trying to wake her up and put her back on.
I just wondered if anyone went through something similar and resolved the issue?
Re: Stressing about weight gain
I am in a similar situation. DD3 has had a hard time gaining weight, which is really unexpected to me since my other two gained fast.
This is our story CP from another post:
DD3 was 8 lbs 9oz at birth. She fell to 8 lbs 3oz the next day, 7 lbs 15 oz at 2 days, and was 7 lbs 11oz when we left the hospital on day 3. She was slightly jaundiced but not enough that we had to do any treatment for it.
At our first pedi appointment on day 5, she was 7 lbs 12oz. We had blood taken to check her bilirubin levels and went back to see our pedi 2 days later. At 7 days, she was still 7 lbs 12oz. Her bilirubin levels were okay, so pedi just told us to continue feeding at least every 2 hours during the day. DD3 was super sleepy the first week and extremely hard to wake. She wouldn't latch on and nurse unless it was her idea. At 1 week she was starting to wake up more, nurse better, and have more wet/poopy diapers. My milk came in on day 2. Her latch was good; I could hear and see her swallowing. She just had been falling asleep at the breast.
So the 2 week appointment came around, and I was so sure she'd gained weight. She was 7 lbs 12 oz again. My pedi wasn't overally concerned. She knew I'd nursed 2 babies with no issues, so she suggested I pump after nursing to make sure she was getting hind milk. I did that a few times. I was able to pump enough after feedings that I wasn't concerned about supply. I always had hind milk in the breast that she'd just eaten from. So I started supplementing an ounce of milk in a bottle after nursing on both sides. The only thing that did was cause her go longer between sessions. If she nursed on one side, she'd go 1 hour. If she nursed on both sides, she'd go 2 hours. If I added an ounce of milk to that, she'd go 3 hours. To me, it wasn't worth the effort to find time to pump with a needy baby and 2.5 yo if she ate the same amount anyway. Then we hit the 3 week growth spurt where she nursed constantly, and there was no time to pump. Plus I didn't want to mess with my supply by giving bottles.
At 4 weeks, she was up to 8 lbs 2oz, and she had grown about 1" by my measurements. The pedi was happy that she was starting to gain weight. She doesn't look unhealthy at all, she's nursing frequently, she has plenty of wet and poopy diapers. If it want for the scale, I would have had no idea that there was anything wrong.
So I actually bought an infant scale on amazon because I kept worrying about her weight. I was hoping to do weighed feedings, but it doesn't seem to work well for us. It will show that DD only gained 1/2 oz in a feeding, which can't be right since I can easily pump 2 to 3 oz per side in the same amount of time.
The great thing about the scale however was that it showed DD3 is now 8 lbs 14 oz at 6 weeks! I'm super happy about an average 6 oz/week gain.
I think all we needed was time for DD3 to wake up and start nursing better. It sounds like you're doing what you can. Nursing more often is probably the best thing you can do. Did you have supply problems in the past? Increasing supply too much may just end up giving baby even more foremilk if she's not able to completely empty the breast. I'd just say hang in there, look at baby to make sure she's healthy, don't just look at the scale, and try not to worry.
Charlotte Ella 07.16.10
Emmeline Grace 03.27.13
Right now I am just letting her nurse as much as she wants and trying to wake her up if she falls asleep and put her back on. If I get any spare time I could pump after my feed and give that to her aswell. But right now, I don't get much spare time...
My son had a lot of problems latching in the first few weeks, and then when he would latch, he often fell asleep. So his weight gain was not good, and we had to supplement.
I would put him to the breast and attempt to get him to latch for about 5 to 10 minutes. If I got him latched I had to keep him awake and nursing for at least 15 minutes. So sometimes I really had to nag him - lots of tickling, cool washcloths, stripped down to diaper, and what not. After I got 15 minutes I'd let him nurse until he unlatched, and then I'd repeat on the second breast. If he didn't latch I'd offer the second breast and again try to get him to latch and eat for 15 minutes. After he was done nursing, of after failing at the latching attempts, DH would feed him up to 2oz of expressed milk while I pumped for 20 minutes. I think this is key - you have to have someone else doing the supplemental feeding while you're pumping, otherwise you will be totally and utterly exhausted. Anyway, that routine could get us 2 to 3 hours between feedings (which really wasn't much of a break for me what with the pumping).
He put on weight beautifully. We offered the supplemental bottle until he consistently started to refuse it after nursing. That happened when he was about 4 weeks old.
Married Bio * BFP Charts
My DD is a slow gainer too. She was 8lb 5.5oz at birth and at 10 days had dropped to 7lb 1.5oz.
Her pedi and the LCs were all concerned and we went through the ringer those first few weeks. We tried an SNS, we tried nurse first then bottle, but it wasn't until we switched to bottles first that she started to really gain weight well. Once she started gaining, she was on the 15th percentile curve and has stayed right around that. We've had like 6 weighed feeds and the most she's ever transferred is 2/3 of an ounce.
I always imagined being that super crunchy, cosleeping (DD sleeps better in her crib), extended BFing, babywearing, cloth diapering mom. It was so so so hard in those early weeks to accept that I wasn't going to be able to exclusively BF. So our story is a little different...
Have you tried a weighed feed to see how much your LO is transferring? We did one with the LC/PT we saw for a feeding evaluation at our children's hospital. She checked the latch (looked good), listened with a stethoscope to DD's jaw/throat (heard swallowing, good) but upon checking her weight, she only transferred 20ml in ~12 mins. We also had her frenulum clipped (twice) because it seemed tight to the LCs and they suspected she was having trouble getting her tongue to the roof of her mouth. If you have had LO's tongue checked, I recommend it!
I really wanted to get her back to BFing when she's with me, but I don't think I will. I'm going to keep EP and letting her nurse at least in the mornings and when I get home from work. I just keep hoping that one of these days it will just click. GL!
I am going to try this approach and she how it goes...
Thanks