Sorry, but it might be quiet here for a little while. My recovery is not going quite according to schedule and Oliver has turned out to be a lazy drinker, so we’re dealing with trying to get him to suck, while pumping and bottle feeding him. It’s all a bit stressful at the moment, but we’re all fine and for the most part healthy. Hopefully things will get easier soon.
Update
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Oh Christina, I’m sorry to hear of the difficulties; many positive thoughts coming your way from southern Italy
Breastfeeding so often does not come without a hitch or two. I really wish that had been dealt with more in the stuff I read before I gave birth. The old “Stilltee” discussion isn’t adequate enough for all the little hiccups in getting it working. One stupid Hebamme in the hospital I was at said you don’t want your child to starve do you, but overall I had a wonderful Hebamme who helped me and my son get breastfeeding going. My son had a hard time latching on and sucking too, but once he got it down, as Oliver will too, breastfeeding is very low maintenance and stress free and I found bottles too much work especially in the middle of the night! Chin up!
Sorry to hear it, but here’s hoping all will be much better very soon. All the best.
Christina,
hang in there, it will get better.
Hope you’re feeling better soon,
Martina
My DIL had problems with breastfeeding and finally gave it up. She was made to feel guilty about it, which is the pits really. I wish you a good and speedy recovery…ciao
Hope things get smoother soon! Keep us posted…
hope you’re better soon!
::hugs::
Thanks everyone! I’m feeling better today, but will find out for sure tomorrow if I’ve improved at all.
Bottle feeding is a serious pain. Right now I’m breastfeeding, then giving a bottle of breastmilk, then giving a bottle of formula (if needed), then pumping, for every feeding. It’s a two hour job that needs to be done every 3-4 hours!
Christina, stick with the breast if you can. It is so much easier. Oliver looked super to me. Did they say he didn’t make a weight gain or why did they push the bottle. Anyway, you’ll figure it out. Relax and enjoy that beautiful boy. He is amazingly gorgeous and looks very strong to me! Pam
Also, I was told when I breastfed that the baby got 90% of the milk he needed in the first five minutes of a feeding and then five minutes more was plenty. I would go ten minutes on one breast, 5 on the other, and then alternate breasts at the next feeding. This was a few decades ago and I would check the info, but it worked great for me and my babies did very well. Good luck. Pam
I agree with Pam, the baby gets most of the milk during the first few minutes of nursing.
From experience, I know that once you get a baby used to the ease of drinking out of a bottle, it’s hard to get him to go back to nursing, because it’s a different kind of sucking. They seem to “forget” how to suck at the breast after bottle feeding.
But there’s nothing wrong with bottle feeding, formula is perfectly fine, millions of kids have been raised on it. You just sort of need to decide on one or the other, what you’re doing is too much “Aufwand”.
I just saw your videos – cute baby! I know I can’t judge from a few videos, but he seems to always look to his right – you need to make sure you get him to look/lay towards the left, too, otherwise he’ll get a flat spot on the right side of his head. I’m not kidding, I have seen this happen.
The Hebamme had me feeding him formula because he wasn’t gaining any weight. He was 3820g at birth, 3580g when he came home, and dropped to 3460g after one week. After supplementing with formula and pumping to get my milk up, we’ve got him to 3640g today (he’s now 2 weeks old) and she wants him back up to his birth weight by Friday.
The problem is he’s a major sleepyhead. He falls asleep after about 30 seconds at the breast and when I do manage to wake him, he doesn’t suck strongly. Even with a bottle he’s not sucking strongly – it takes over 30-45 minutes for him to drink 100mL of formula, I’ve got to rewarm the bottle twice in between. The Hebamme says he’s “sehr gemütlich.”
I’m hoping as he gains weight and gets older that the sucking and sleepyhead problems will disappear, so I’m sticking with the routine for now (I’m thinking I’ll keep it up till he’s 6 weeks old, then decide), although I don’t always pump at night (or give additional formula if he seems to have done pretty well at the breast). He has shown some slight improvement in taking milk from the breast this week.
He doesn’t always look to his right either, he’s pretty evenly split with turning his head in one direction or the other. I think it’s just coincidence that he’s always looking right in the videos.