Jodie, good on you hun, you're doing a great job

I think Barb's advice is excellent. It sounds like you and I have had very similar problems with BFing. I had a very sleepy bub (premmie) and had to wake him to feed etc for many weeks. I also used to let him spend an hour or so on the boob. In hindsight it would have been better if I'd done as Barb has suggested to you - feed for approx. 20 mins on one side, then burp/change, and then offer the other side......doing this around every 3 hours or so. The idea is to get as many feeds as possible into these little ones, not necessarily spend a long time on the boob each feed. That's not to say that all that sucking is a bad thing though!

Sleepy babies are not necessarily babies that have full tummies. It's hard to see it that way, but sometimes it's better to wake them more frequently, even though we feel 'mean' doing so.

I have always had to comp feed with formula, and TBH, although I'm ecstatic that we have continued to BF this long, I wish it could have been exclusive BFing. I think if I had done as I've describe above we would have had a better chance at weaning off the formula early on. I have a reasonable supply these days, but DS is so used to his bottles now, it would take alot of work to get rid of them......and I don't want to jeopardise our BFing realtionship.

If you want to chat at all, feel free to PM me. And keep up the good work!