help?

[Ryatha]

Hi Hun, Sorry to hear you are having troubles.

I second the other posters who said to ditch the dummy & use your bb to comfort. Yep you will feel like they are out 24/7 but it should help him with the weight gain and the rash. Make sure you get plenty of rest, food and fluid as well to make sure you are making heaps of the good stuff for Mr C

[AngelPants]

so we saw the doc yesterday, mr c has lost 200g in just over a week. he's put me on maxalon to try and up my milk cos even after mr c hadnt fed for 4 hrs on wednesday night i could only express 30mls per boobie. i havnt been able to express that much since either even tho ive had him on the boob almost constantly during the day thursday and DS has been grizzling almost constantly. i resorted to buying a tin of formula and gave him a top up and he drank 75mls straight after both boobies and then slept for 2.5hrs straight, unheard of during the day for him and he didnt even want his dummy makes me feel worse about it being so long before i talked to the doc about it.
so far he has had 3 formula top ups, the last one he had 120mls plus 2 boobies so i dont think he is getting much, if anything from me. how long should it take for the drugs to work if they are going to work?
also would getting sick effect my milk? cos DF is sick as a dog and as of wednesday i am getting it as well. i think DS is as well, one of the 1st signs was a snotty nose and hes got a snotty nose.

[ladybird11]

I was wondering about supply issues, same thing happened to me with DS (and DD for that matter). I can't remember the name of the LC that came out to me (we're in the same local area, so you may score the same one perhaps?) she recommended the forumla top ups, and keeping a diary of feed times and how much breast milk he took (EBM or b/f) and the duration, and I had to start offering and recording each formula top up too. I may have offered 100mL but if only half that was taken that would be recorded and the rest discarded, until the 100mL gets close to always being finished, then i upped the top ups as DS grew. Through expressing I saw my supply dwindle quite quickly to nothing, so I gave up *red face*.

And yeah, it did make me feel bad (as I'd tried those lactation cookies *yummy*, and maxalon, and one other prescription too), but for me it was about what was in the best interests for a healthy baby.

Good luck hun!

[onthefly]

I think it will take a few days for the drugs to work. The absolute best thing to increase your supply is frequent feeding - how much you express is not a good indication of supply as many women have trouble getting much out with a pump and yet their babies do ok. So try as much as you can to get him on the breast.
Try not to feel bad - it's all trial and error in the early days and you will sort this out. The first rule is always feed the baby, so if you're doing that you're doing well
Illness might affect supplyl if you're dehydrated, but otherwise it shouldn't have much of an effect.

[Dansta]

'mar.
Expressing isn't always the best way to tell how much milk you've got. some boobies just hate having milk taken out by anything but a baby!
can you co-sleep with Mr c? and just let him have an 'open bar'? maybe after a few hours change sides? see if that a) give him more boobie and b) upps your supply? another thing that may help with supply is RLT. you're doing a wonderful job and i'll be sending milky making vibes your way too.
if you need to talk PM me.

[sas85]

Oh chicky, I know you are disappointed atm but good things are he is getting some breastmilk or his poos wouldn't have been yellow before you introduced the comps, true, pumps are not the best guage - some people can pump milk like a dairy cow but others can't get anything or can just get what's in the fore breast and not fully milk the breast like a baby that is sucking well so you prob still have more than 60ml over 4 hours, and it sounds like the topups will help him wake up a bit and take better feeds etc. When I had to put my girls on top ups the MHCN said to think of it like medicine - if our bubs were sick we would not feed badly about giving them some medicine to improve their health, and that is the same when our supplies are legitimately low - it's medicine on top of the booby goodness to help our bubs grow.

My suggestion is not to offer a top up after every feed because it makes them go longer between feeds (since formula is heavier to digest) and if you can't express much between feeds it will be counterproductive long-term. I've found offering one or two bigger top ups in the day keeps DD gaining weight well as well as helping her settle and still demand lots of breastfeeds (I know for me motillium takes a good couple of days to kick in but have to have that increased stimulation for it to work it won't just automatically increase on its own kwim) Hope it kicks in for you soon 'mar.

[AngelPants]

ok so i have only been offering DS a top up when hes been fussing at my boobies after feeding for a bit, when they r empty and hes not full or if hes grizzly still after a feed. so far its been 4 or 5 top ups. and i baked those lactation cookies last night and a few hours later expressed 80mls from 1 boobie very strange but they work at least a little bit... just sitting down to a RLT as well, fingers crossed we see some improvement soon!