Reintroducing Breastfeeding

Not the same situation but i wasn’t initially able to breastfeed my baby boy (now 7 weeks old) and he was exclusively bottle fed for about two weeks after birth. Since i started breastfeeding he has continued to accept bottles of expressed milk with no problem. I noticed he doesn’t fancy the dummy as much anymore though. I’m sure she will be fine as long as you continue to give her the occasional bottle xx Breastfeeding was super overwhelming for me too initially but it got so much better with patience and persistence. Good luck ❤️

Pumping is still breastfeeding but even if you went to formula there's no need to feel guilty. Do you have any local breastfeeding support groups near you you can get long to? I found that sounds helpful with latching issues at the start but I would just go back to basics lots of skin to skin and offering the breast to encourage latching. Nipple to nose and all that stuff you would have done at the start

@Daria Do you give many bottles or mostly breastfed? Do you find him being more restless without the dummy as that was my issue as to why I stopped because I felt like she wasn’t feeding off of me a lot of the time it was just comfort ☹️ I know I do feel like I’m getting less overwhelmed etc now that we are out the newborn trenches 😂 x

@Rachael yeah there are a few actually and I was thinking of going to one but just wanted to ask here before I did go 🥰

The breastfeeding network have a list of sessions where you can talk to a breastfeeding counsellor.

@Danielle he gets only one bottle a day in the evening before going to bed, my partner feeds him so i can get a break. He still takes the dummy just not always like before, im not even sure if it’s because of breastfeeding. I wouldn’t worry too much you can go back to the bottle if it doesn’t work out but i think you should definitely try if that’s what you want

I breastfed for 3 days before moving to exclusively pumping due to a painful latch, we started trying to reintroduce breastfeeding around week 7 - LO wouldn’t latch for several days, but she managed by doing skin to skin while she was napping and the ‘breast crawl’ when she woke up as she was still wee enough to have the natural instinct if she was still sleepy. LO is now 12 weeks and we still do bottles 75% of the time but she has no issues with boob or bottle preference, just make sure when bottle feeding you use a slow teat and are pace feeding to mimic the flow. She also has no issues with taking a dummy to settle to sleep or so on. I did notice my supply dropped when she started to breastfeed as she wasn’t ‘emptying’ the boobs - I had an oversupply though so the supply more so just regulated to what she needed as the excess milk produced wasn’t being removed as often.