A mother shares her experience formula feeding.
When I was pregnant, I had made the decision to fully breastfeed for the first 6 months of my daughters life. After a long hard labour, I ended up having an emergency c-section. That effected my milk quite a lot – as I had a big bleed out. So I was very low on colostrum, and we had to give her formula top ups at the hospital.
Finally 5 days after I had her, my milk came in. It was good for the first 2 or so weeks. Then I started noticing how unsettled she was and she would just scream after coming off. I discovered that I didn’t have enough milk. So she was back to formula top-ups.
I started expressing to build up my supply. She was doing much better for a couple of weeks, then when she was around 5 weeks old, she started screaming at every feed and refusing breast and bottle.
She was so distressed from not eating that she would just fall asleep after not having a proper feed.
We took her to after hours and found out that she had silent reflux. That first feed we gave her (with gaviscon infant in it) was such an improvement. She guzzled it down. But after that she started outright refusing my breast.
I would put her on every single feed and have her scream and scream until I gave her a bottle. This went on for a couple of weeks until finally my milk went dry from not having her sucking ( I was expressing 5-7 times a day to keep up the supply until she got over her reflux). Expressing can only do so much.
So I made the decision to stop breastfeeding. At first there was disappointment and quilt. But I had some very encouraging people around me to bring me up and remind me that I did do everything I could to help her feed. She is much better this way – as she was in pain when feeding. She associated breastfeeding with pain.
She’s sleeping much better and is a very settled happy baby now. Formula has been a life-saver for us.
We use Heinz Nurture starter and find it great. The Gaviscon goes into the bottle at the same time.
{update, baby is 8 weeks old now and has come off the Gaviscon and is thriving on her formula}
