Hi Airline, sorry, I saw this earlier but haven't had a chance to reply!

With DS2, we were down to -15% birth weight at day 3 so were put on formula. I got in a private LC and she's helped immensely. This is what she has me doing:

1. Offer boobs 20 mins on each side
2. Top up with EBM then formula (at that age it was 90ml total)
3. Express 10 mins on each side. (I would express while DH fed DS2) - this would keep feeds down to 60mins

While expressing, I would have wheat-pack on each boob to warm it up, and would massage the boob by hand to get the ducts happy.

I would take
1. Motillium (I understand you don't want to do this) - 8 tabs / day
2. 1500 mg Fenugreek
3. 800mg blessed thistle.
4. 6-8 lactation cookies / day
5. 1 no-alcohol beer (cooper's) from the supermarket / day

There is a combined herbal medication called "breastfeeding gold" which is a combination of fenugreek / blessed thistle, I only take 10/day of that instead of 15/fenugreek / 8 blessed thistle.

Drink *lots* and *lots* of water. My LC said that if you can *just* smell the fenugreek on your body, then you've gotten the dose right. I can smell it in my pee (maple syrup smell!)

When doing the top-up, we were told to sit him up and to use a long teat. We were also given exercises for around his mouth to build strength and let him know a feed is coming.
Our LC also said that babie's digest food in 90mins, so if they want a feed at the 2.5hours mark, then that's fine. We were feeding him no more than 3-hourly (from start of feed to start of feed) to get the weight up. So we were waking him up for the feeds. It's interesting to know that the best way to see if your bub is feeding enough is to watch their movement - lots of sleeping with no alert periods isn't good, so as long as your bub has alert periods, then it's likely to be getting enough.

All the best in your journey!