Re: breastfeeding vs bottle
Asked by Melons

Question:

My baby is two weeks old and we have been having trouble breastfeeding. she started to lose too much weight and the doctor in the neonatal unit told me to top her up with formula

after a breastfeed. this made her put on plenty of weight and she is at birthweight again. My dilemma is that the lactation consultant we just saw wants me to cut out the formula. Last night she was on the breast for an hour and still wasn't satisfied so made up just 50ml of formula and gave it to her. she downed the 50ml and was satisfied so i don't know if i should listen to the lactation consultant. any advice?

My Advice:
 

Firstly, what reasons did the lactation consultant give you?  It is hard to know what advice to give you as we don't know the full story - like how big your baby is and how much growth they are expecting etc....  (as often they expect too much growth for a breastfed baby), but I'll do my best...

I can understand where the lactation consultant is coming from as the more you top up the baby the less your baby will want your milk.  If baby does not suck properly, you may never get your supply up and the chances are that baby will not want to get on the breast  - it's a vicious cycle. 

BUT you also have to weigh up the health of your baby and its weight gain. 

It's hard to know what to do - and I know as I had the same struggle with my son.

He was born early via emergency caesarian at only 5lb, he had a tongue tie and was really weak.  So really we had nothing going for us as far as breastfeeding was concerned - except my stubborn-ness.

I'll tell you what we did but  you need to decide what feels right to you. 

I really wanted to breastfeed but he just wouldn't (for the first few weeks I couldn't even get him on - so you are doing better than we did) and he was losing weight, so I fed him from a bottle (on nurses' advice), but kept following up the breastfeeding. 

I expressed breastmilk for him and where it was not enough I gave him formula (always formula after breastmilk, so he was getting as much breastmilk as he could).  I figured the longer I could get breastmilk into him the better (though my supply kept dropping) and I just kept hoping that one day he would decide he liked breastfeeding. I expressed between feeds to try and get supply up and just kept persisting.  At 5 weeks I got him breastfeeding at last and then I just gave him one bottle of formula in the evening, to about 4 months.  Then he was fully breastfed until he went onto solids.

For us that worked well - I kept my supply up (though it was starting to go down) and that gave us time to find someone who could actually help us - and believe me we went to them all, lactation consultants, speech therapists, paediatricians etc....  I went to a great overnight hospital in Canberra and they sort it out over a couple of days.  Plus I knew he was getting the benefits of breastfeeding - even if only for a few weeks.  I just took each week as it came and kept going as long as I could.

Many breastfeeding experts have concern about substituting the bottle as it can mean babies don't want the breast and in fact my paediatrician told me had never had a baby go from the bottle back on to the breast.  The bottle is so much easier for the little one that the breast seems like hard work afterwards.  So, perhaps what we did won't work for everyone, but I figure it is worth a try. 

Why does it have to be one or the other if you can find a balance that works for you and for your baby?

I would say listen to what the lactation consultant is saying, trying to get positioning right and give your baby time to work out breastfeeding.  if your baby is growing and doing enough wet nappies the lc may be right, but I think if you are concerned then see what the dr says.  If you do keep it up, give a bottle after a breastfeed - or maybe just give one at night before bed, when your supply is low.  Let us know how you go...