Hi,
sorry to dump but I have some stuff to get off my chest (! lol!).
As you know I had my little boy last Saturday and frankly I had an easy labour really, gas and air, only a small tear, no stitches. I opted to stay in the hospital for a few days to get the feeding established and really just because I was so bewildered etc.
I didn't have that many problems latching him on but my nipples seemed quite sensitive. Elliott had swallowed a lot of mucus during labour and so was very sleepy for the first few days which meant a huge fuss getting him to wake up to feed- stripping him off and blowing on him and 50 mins on the breast etc. After two days though he started getting a bit more demanding but my milk hadn't come through. All he wanted to do was to suck and they kept telling me to put him back on. The final straw came for me on Tuesday night when he was feeding for 4 hours straight- every time he wailed they told me to put him back on. I ended up crying so much with tiredness and pain that they took him away to give me a break and then gave him some formula to fill him up.
The day after next I went home and he was still really wanting food the whole time. The first night home was a nightmare- he was screaming frantically and several lumps had come off my nipples and he was throwing up bits of it and blood which freaked me out. They had told us to feed him small amounts of formula off a spoon if he wouldn't settle but it was so hard to get enough down him to stop his hunger. At 4am after phoning the midwife she came out and fed him 90ml of formula milk and his whole little body relaxed- he was so hungry. She gave us some syringes and hoped that my milk would come in (I think this is day 4-5 now) but it didn't and it was taking us several hours to feed him small amounts of formula.
At this point I called my Mum who came and helped scrape us off the floor as I hadn't slept more than about 10 hours in a week (I didn't think thebody could do this) and the midwife was telling me to rest to help my milk in. Another 24 hours passed and although I was producing milk a little bit I got no hormonal shifts, no full breasts and (when I expressed with a pump to try and give my nipples time to heal) only about 10ml of milk in total. It got to Friday and more bits came off my nipples which were now sorer than any of my other bits put together (it wasn't the latching on they think- more the time spent and my skin/make up) that just thinking of feeding him made me cry. I felt so down because I was in such pain and he was so hungry and I just couldn't enjoy being with him as I was so worried about him.
Eventually I got 3 hours sleep and decided- day 6, to give up the breastfeeding. We put him onto formula and he is a totally different baby- he's taking 100ml every 4 hours and he's not cried that horrible desperate cry since. Sadly I have now developed mastitus so just when I'd decided that yes I'd turned the corner I got knocked back again but they got me antibiotics very quickly and it seems to be better now. My Mum's milk never really came in with my brother either. They seemed to say that if I expressed and syringe fed him formula eventually it might stimulate more milk but they couldn't say when.
I feel very emotional about the whole thing as it was such an ordeal and means that I'm hanging on my my fingernails slightly when I otherwise might have been a bit more sorted by now. The last two days he's decided to be up all night with one thing or another so now my DH is freaked out that I will never sleep again and will run crying into him in the night as I did one of the nights last week just crying for help (I was trying to give him some rest so one of us was functioning).
My Mum has gone home to sleep today- she'll be back Tuesday if we need her. I've had 2 hours sleep since midday yesterday as he was up all night but today we have kept him with us and he's been drifting in and out of sleep all day rather than just being flat out like the last two so I'm hoping he might choose to sleep tonight. (Not through obviously- just any sleep at all would be cool!) He's no problem it's just that I'd rather he was fussing in the day rather than the night! Any tips? He seems to quite naturally have slipped into a 4 hour feeding pattern of 11, 7, 3 which is cool.
Anyway. Sorry to moan, I just wondered if anyone else had had bad breastfeeding experiences, I'm trying very hard not to see it as a failure. I can't help feeling that the hospital were wrong in getting me to have him latched on so much though. The last night I was there there was another woman in the cubicle next to me sobbing over her boy in exactly the same situation i.e. feeding for long periods. When the specialist breastfeeding midwife came on the next morning she seemed horrified- I think it was a case of not everyone pulling in the same direction really.
Oh- some more questions. I had to learn about formula dead fast- do you have any tips? At the moment as my head is totally frazzled I'm using the premade up stuff but how do you mix the powder. Do you cool the boiled water in your kettle, do you wait for it to be totally cool? Do you make up the 6 feeds at once? Any hints and tips gratefully received!
Thanks for reading! Feels good to get it out!
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sorry to dump but I have some stuff to get off my chest (! lol!).
As you know I had my little boy last Saturday and frankly I had an easy labour really, gas and air, only a small tear, no stitches. I opted to stay in the hospital for a few days to get the feeding established and really just because I was so bewildered etc.
I didn't have that many problems latching him on but my nipples seemed quite sensitive. Elliott had swallowed a lot of mucus during labour and so was very sleepy for the first few days which meant a huge fuss getting him to wake up to feed- stripping him off and blowing on him and 50 mins on the breast etc. After two days though he started getting a bit more demanding but my milk hadn't come through. All he wanted to do was to suck and they kept telling me to put him back on. The final straw came for me on Tuesday night when he was feeding for 4 hours straight- every time he wailed they told me to put him back on. I ended up crying so much with tiredness and pain that they took him away to give me a break and then gave him some formula to fill him up.
The day after next I went home and he was still really wanting food the whole time. The first night home was a nightmare- he was screaming frantically and several lumps had come off my nipples and he was throwing up bits of it and blood which freaked me out. They had told us to feed him small amounts of formula off a spoon if he wouldn't settle but it was so hard to get enough down him to stop his hunger. At 4am after phoning the midwife she came out and fed him 90ml of formula milk and his whole little body relaxed- he was so hungry. She gave us some syringes and hoped that my milk would come in (I think this is day 4-5 now) but it didn't and it was taking us several hours to feed him small amounts of formula.
At this point I called my Mum who came and helped scrape us off the floor as I hadn't slept more than about 10 hours in a week (I didn't think thebody could do this) and the midwife was telling me to rest to help my milk in. Another 24 hours passed and although I was producing milk a little bit I got no hormonal shifts, no full breasts and (when I expressed with a pump to try and give my nipples time to heal) only about 10ml of milk in total. It got to Friday and more bits came off my nipples which were now sorer than any of my other bits put together (it wasn't the latching on they think- more the time spent and my skin/make up) that just thinking of feeding him made me cry. I felt so down because I was in such pain and he was so hungry and I just couldn't enjoy being with him as I was so worried about him.
Eventually I got 3 hours sleep and decided- day 6, to give up the breastfeeding. We put him onto formula and he is a totally different baby- he's taking 100ml every 4 hours and he's not cried that horrible desperate cry since. Sadly I have now developed mastitus so just when I'd decided that yes I'd turned the corner I got knocked back again but they got me antibiotics very quickly and it seems to be better now. My Mum's milk never really came in with my brother either. They seemed to say that if I expressed and syringe fed him formula eventually it might stimulate more milk but they couldn't say when.
I feel very emotional about the whole thing as it was such an ordeal and means that I'm hanging on my my fingernails slightly when I otherwise might have been a bit more sorted by now. The last two days he's decided to be up all night with one thing or another so now my DH is freaked out that I will never sleep again and will run crying into him in the night as I did one of the nights last week just crying for help (I was trying to give him some rest so one of us was functioning).
My Mum has gone home to sleep today- she'll be back Tuesday if we need her. I've had 2 hours sleep since midday yesterday as he was up all night but today we have kept him with us and he's been drifting in and out of sleep all day rather than just being flat out like the last two so I'm hoping he might choose to sleep tonight. (Not through obviously- just any sleep at all would be cool!) He's no problem it's just that I'd rather he was fussing in the day rather than the night! Any tips? He seems to quite naturally have slipped into a 4 hour feeding pattern of 11, 7, 3 which is cool.
Anyway. Sorry to moan, I just wondered if anyone else had had bad breastfeeding experiences, I'm trying very hard not to see it as a failure. I can't help feeling that the hospital were wrong in getting me to have him latched on so much though. The last night I was there there was another woman in the cubicle next to me sobbing over her boy in exactly the same situation i.e. feeding for long periods. When the specialist breastfeeding midwife came on the next morning she seemed horrified- I think it was a case of not everyone pulling in the same direction really.
Oh- some more questions. I had to learn about formula dead fast- do you have any tips? At the moment as my head is totally frazzled I'm using the premade up stuff but how do you mix the powder. Do you cool the boiled water in your kettle, do you wait for it to be totally cool? Do you make up the 6 feeds at once? Any hints and tips gratefully received!
Thanks for reading! Feels good to get it out!
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