I am not a first time mom but I am due in a few weeks and I am starting to look ahead and make preparations for breastfeeding. However, I had some trouble trying to feed my daughter when she was born. You would think as large chested as I am I would have been a dairy but it was quite the opposite. I had to get an industrial hospital grade pump and turn it all the way on high just to get a few ounces for my girl.
She had a fantastic latch and an even better appetite and no matter how hard I tried we both ended up completely frustrated and still hungry. I went to the le-leche league and even had nurses visit my home to help me out and after several months, my baby loosing weight and me feeling like garbage because I wasn't able to produce. We all decided what was best for my girl was supplementation. Give her everything I could get from the breast and if I was dry, do a formula like Enfamil to satisfy her.
With my son this time around I am wondering if I should get a few cans of formula just in-case this happens again. I want badly to breast feed my son but I really don't want him to loose as much weight as my daughter did. She is developmentally perfect but she is on the tiny side and I often wonder if that is the reason why.
Any suggestions? Please if you are going to preach at me over not solely breast feeding you need to understand my little girl was starving. The formula was NOT a Crutch.Only helpful answers please I am very worried about this.
Thank you.
Re: Wondering about breast feeding round two.
Thank you so much for your reply,
I had to reply to you because of the picture of your little girl! Who is super adorable by the way. I see her name at the bottom and you wont believe this but my daughter and yours have something in common. My girls name is Clara Elise
Small world.
We had a can just in case. Turns out we needed to supplement anyway because his blood sugars were low in the hospital. I pump, but I just don't make enough. DS is 3 weeks old, and pretty much since we brought him home, he's been eating 3oz, which is a lot for a baby that young. But since I'm only making about 3oz a day, we never would have made it. So he eats mostly formula and 1-2 bottles a day of BM, depending on how much I can pump.
Feed your baby. It doesn't matter if it's FF or BF. Have the cans just in case, because it sounds like it's a possibility that it may not be successful again. Try your best, an if it doesn't work out, then you've got back up. The nurses and lactation consultants will try to get you to EBF, but do what's best for your LO and if you have to do formula, it's not giving up. I don't believe in nipple confusion, personally. We've been doing a bottle since day 1 and on a whim today I tried to BF (he's 3 weeks) and he was able to latch and get something (not a lot, but it was something). GL!
You've heard what I've done, not what I've been through.
If you were in my shoes, you'd fall the first step."
We love the old names. DS is Henry Levi.