r/breastfeeding • • 7h ago

Discussion Jealous of formula fed babies

77 Upvotes

I’m 3 months in exclusively breast fed. My cousin had a baby same time as me and her baby is formula fed.

I just feel jealous that she can go out and get her nails done, get a massage and get her haircut. Or she can easily leave the house and feed the baby once or twice very quickly.

Whereas I can’t do these long treatments as my baby needs a feeding and leaving the house is a whole chore as she need to feed multiple times. Using a cover is so stressful for me (I wear a hijab so not using one isn’t an option) and have to make sure finding a suitable place to feed and the unpredictability! I don’t know if she’ll feed well not sure how often she’ll want to feed, etc. she used to have lots of issues latching and cried and fussed everytine she fed so breastfeeding in public was a cause of stress for me. This past week has been better tho.

I just feel jealous I want to get a massage or leave my baby with my husband sometimes and not have to breastfeed in public


r/breastfeeding • • 4h ago

Infant Growth/Weight Exercise has impacted my nursing

16 Upvotes

edit: please stop commenting that I shouldnt try to lose weight. I am not trying to and I haven't lost a single lb In the last month. I am exercising for mental reasons, not physical. Thanks.

I am so frustrated. My baby gained weight so good until he had his 4 month checkup recently. I was shocked to learn he only gained 2 lbs from his 2 to 4 month check. I waited 10 days then went in for another weight check because it was stressing me out. Only gained 2 oz. Ever since I joined the gym a month ago I felt like his weight slowed down. But there were no obvious signs other than his clothes seeming to fit exactly the same as time passed. 10+ wet diapers, sleeps well at night, overall very happy baby and already rolling and pretty alert during wake hours. Dr said it might be my milk nutrition since I am exercising 6 days a week for 30min to 1 hr. Nothing crazy. Just walking in the treadmill at an incline or maybe 100 flights on the stair-master on my “hard“ days. This sucks. I feel like I have given up so much to breastfeed and its seemingly doing nothing at this point. I am not willing to also give up exercise or having to eat chicken for every meal to make up for it. I am giving up. As soon as he takes a bottle, I am done. Everyone acts like once you give birth, you reclaim your body. But its just not true at all.


r/breastfeeding • • 15h ago

Discussion Coffee during breastfeeding.

7 Upvotes

How many cups of coffee is actually ok to drink while breastfeeding? The baby is 6 months old.

Can anyone share a modern reliable research or some info about it?

I currently drink 2 cups. But recently I kinda need at least one more.


r/breastfeeding • • 14h ago

Period-Related Has anyone had multiple periods then have it not return due to breastfeeding?

0 Upvotes

I had a c-section in April and I had my first period at about 9 weeks PP and since then I’ve had 4 periods which all came on time but this month I did not get my period. I took a pregnancy test when I was 3 days late and again at 7 days late and both were negative. Has anyone else experienced this while breastfeeding and had it confirmed that it was due to breastfeeding? I have an appointment with my obgyn next week I just wanted to see if anyone has experienced this and was it because of breastfeeding or something else?


r/breastfeeding • • 14h ago

Troubleshooting/Tips Milk not coming in right away??

0 Upvotes

So I’m really confused when women say their milk didn’t “come in” right away?? When I had my son who’s now 14 months old and still breastfeeding I didn’t wait?? I started leaking at 13 weeks pregnant is that why? The first time he ate I had to use a nipple sheild and I could see the milk? I want more kids but I’m worried about this because I’ve never experienced it!


r/breastfeeding • • 7h ago

Weaning Is it normal to find the idea of breastfeeding "icky" after weaning?

1 Upvotes

I fed my son until ~14 months. After we stopped breastfeeding, just the thought of him nursing ever again made me very uncomfortable. I assumed it was because I was pregnant again by then, but I've recently weaned my daughter after a year and once again I feel like if she tried to nurse again, I'd find it really "icky".

Is this normal?

Just want to stress that I'm 100% in support of extended breastfeeding and would have gone longer with either kid, but my son was done on his own and then I had to stop with my daughter after she bit me badly enough to give me infected nipples that wouldn't heal until I stopped breastfeeding. So I'm very surprised at how much the idea of breastfeeding my kids now grosses me out.


r/breastfeeding • • 23h ago

Rant/Venting Just need to vent.

1 Upvotes

I’m two months pp and the clinic nurse and my ob both told me very likely my period won’t return. I am EBF. Well I had my first period 7 w pp and now I’m starting my second at 10w pp. I was looking forward to no periods for a while and natural birth control. Guess I really need to ensure I’m taking the pill on time every day :(


r/breastfeeding • • 22h ago

Undersupply "just keep putting them to the breast" but their hungry and theirs nothing there?

33 Upvotes

It's a piece of advice I receive constantly as I have an under supply I'm trying to increase and am combination feeding by force. Every feed starts with the breast and she takes as much as she can and then I top off with the bottle and when I can I pump after (I can't pump after every feed, I did for a while and went mad, instead I generally do two power pumps a day + one 20 minutes pump). Now at 11 weeks and a tongue tie snip there is some improvement but not a tonne. When my breasts are empty they are empty, not an ml left and it requires a good few minutes of sucking for another let down, something that my baby is too busy scream crying to do (there is no calming down she will scream every time she is shown a dry boob). I'm often told and see other people being advised to not give a top up bottle and just keep bringing the baby to the breast. Surely if I could do that I wouldn't describe myself as having an undersupply? Am I the only one who's baby will scream the house down if they are not absolutely couldn't have another drop stuffed? Or do others just live with the screaming?


r/breastfeeding • • 22h ago

Triple Feeding Breast milk + closed nipple piercings

2 Upvotes

I’m 3 weeks postpartum and breastfeeding has been very challenging - for a few reasons:

- my baby had a latch issue (which we got resolved) so she wasn’t pulling milk/colostrum for the first several days
- once my milk came in, she wasn’t drinking enough and dropping weight so we started combo feeding
- I started pumping to ensure I was emptying enough to produce more
- while she’s increased what she’s taking in at the breast, my supply hasn’t increased enough for what she needs at each feed. I’m producing anywhere from 2-2.5oz total between both breasts when I exclusively pump. She needs at least 3 oz at each feed, sometimes more.
- I’ve been triple feeding (breast, pump, bottle) for almost three weeks and it’s exhausting and SO difficult and time consuming.

Why am I sharing this? In my journey to continue to figure out why my supply isn’t going up —> I had my nipples pierced when I was younger but took my piercings out 10 years ago. When I started producing milk, I noticed a good amount was coming out of the base of my nipple where my piercings were. I changed flange sizes 2 times to accommodate for the base of my nipple pulling into the flange when pumping to ensure everything is getting removed.
Even with a quite large flange, I’m still concerned the flange is not expressing the milk coming out of the base of my nipple and therefore, not expelling all the milk I have and not telling my body to make more supply.

Does anyone have any experience with this issue around how breast milk is coming out around a former nipple piercing?


r/breastfeeding • • 1h ago

Celebration! Today is my 4yo's bday and the end of our booby milk journey.

• Upvotes

I wouldn't call it a celebration per se, it's kind of bittersweet.

Though I could go longer, there are nights where I'm just fed up with it. But boy, do I miss the look of his face when he latches on.

For the most part, I feel like I know he uses me as a comfort, which is probably why I let it go on as long as I did.

My child has always been so easy going and when things get tough, the booby was there to help soothe him.

We cosleep. We've been talking about saying bye to booby milk for a while. I've tried when he was turning 2 then 3 and here we are at 4.

I'm one those those who worries about things before they even happen. I thought tonight was going to be a lot harder.

I wore a different shirt the last two nights, not my usual breastfeeding top with easy access.

He pulled on me. Gave me kisses. Any trick he knew to try to get me to give. But that only lasted for a few minutes and yet felt like an eternity.

He asked for water instead. He's not a lovey kind of kid but we do have some around. I asked which he would like to cuddle with and he choose. After a few minutes of him bouncing around, a couple of songs, he zonked out.

I'm so proud of him but I'm also kind of sad. Sad I didn't give him his normal comfort. Sad it's the end of our journey. And sad because he's getting older.

Tomorrow might be a different story but for tonight on his bday, we did good. 😭🥲🥹


r/breastfeeding • • 13h ago

Encouragement/Solidarity From literally drops of milk, triple feeding, and two rounds of mastitis to exclusively breastfeeding at 4.5 months — our journey ❤️

16 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I’m a FTM to a beautiful 4.5-month-old baby girl. I’ve been wanting to share our breastfeeding journey for a while because I remember how desperately I searched Reddit for stories from other moms struggling with low supply.
Our journey was far from easy, and I hope sharing it might give someone who’s in the thick of it right now a little hope.

The first few weeks: doing everything right and getting almost nothing
My daughter was born at the end of May, weighing just under 7 lbs.I had always hoped to breastfeed, and I thought I’d done everything I was supposed to do to give us a good start.
I had no known health issues or birth complications. We did skin-to-skin immediately after birth. I started nursing and pumping every two hours while we were still in the hospital, and I kept that schedule going once we got home. I continued taking my prenatal vitamins and vitamin D.
But my milk just wasn’t coming in the way I’d expected.
For the first 2–3 weeks, I was getting practically nothing when I pumped.
And when I say nothing, I don’t mean 10 or 20 mL.
I mean literally a few drops.
Not even 5 mL. Just drops.
I tried everything I could think of. I changed flange sizes. I switched pumps. I tried fenugreek after my lactation consultant suggested it.
Nothing seemed to make a difference.
Meanwhile, I was nursing every two hours and supplementing with bottles afterward because my daughter needed to eat.
I kept hearing that breastfeeding was about supply and demand. Nurse more. Pump more. Remove milk more frequently, and your body will respond.
So I did.
I nursed. I pumped. I power pumped. I set alarms. I pushed through exhaustion. My nipples were constantly sore.
And still, those tiny drops were all I could see.
At around three weeks postpartum, I went to see a lactation consultant. We checked my daughter’s latch, and everything looked good. She was latching properly and actively sucking.
But during the weighted feed, she transferred only 7 mL from one breast and 15 mL from the other.
22 mL total.
I was devastated.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t latch or wasn’t trying to nurse. She was doing her part, and I felt like my body just wasn’t producing enough milk for her.
I remember thinking: How is this possible? I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. Why isn’t my body responding?
It wasn’t just about the milk anymore. It felt like my body was failing me.
And then, mastitis. Twice.
As if the constant nursing, pumping, supplementing, and worrying weren’t enough, I also went through two episodes of mastitis in the middle of all this.
It felt almost cruelly ironic to be struggling so much to produce milk and then have to deal with mastitis on top of everything. During those weeks, we had to supplement more formula, going from 20 ml to 30 ml, then 40 ml then 60 ml.
I was physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and increasingly discouraged.
There were so many moments when I questioned whether I should just give up on breastfeeding altogether.
And honestly, I don’t think I would have been wrong to stop. Looking back, I can see just how much I was asking of myself during an already incredibly vulnerable time.
But breastfeeding was something I deeply wanted, so I decided to keep trying, one day at a time.

The unexpected turning point: SLEEP
This is probably the most important part of my story.
During those early weeks, I was so focused on increasing demand that I felt like I had to nurse or pump constantly. I was terrified that skipping even one session would make my already-low supply worse.
One day, my husband suggested that he give our daughter a bottle during one of her middle-of-the-night feeds so I could get a longer stretch of uninterrupted sleep.
I was extremely hesitant.
Everything I’d read about establishing milk supply emphasized frequent milk removal, especially during the early weeks. The idea of missing a feeding or pumping session felt like taking a huge risk.
But eventually, I agreed to try.
And for the first time after countless sleepless nights, I got FOUR consecutive hours of sleep.
Four hours! 😂
It felt incredible.
And to my surprise, my supply didn’t seem to suffer. In fact, I noticed that I was producing more milk the following day. I feed and pumped like before in all other feeding sessions.
So we continued doing this for a while, and I felt that getting more rest helped my supply tremendously.
I had been so focused on creating more demand, pumping more, and doing everything possible to produce more milk that I hadn’t given enough attention to something my body desperately needed: rest.
Of course, everyone’s supply is different, and skipping milk removal can affect supply, especially early on. I’m not suggesting this will work for everyone. But in my experience, getting a little more sleep made a huge difference, both physically and mentally.

Around 10 weeks: taking the leap toward exclusive breastfeeding
By around 10 weeks, I decided to try exclusively breastfeeding.
It was intimidating because I still wasn’t completely confident in my supply.
And those first days were HARD.
Sometimes my daughter wanted to nurse every single hour. Some nursing sessions lasted 40–50 minutes.
There were days when I felt like I barely left the couch.
We also still needed to supplement with bottles in most of the evenings, when my milk flow seemed slower and she was especially hungry.
But I kept going while closely monitoring her weight gain. And very gradually, something started to change.
Her nursing sessions became shorter.
The time between feedings became longer.
She seemed more satisfied after nursing.
We needed fewer and fewer supplemental bottles.
Until eventually, we didn’t need them anymore.
There wasn’t one magical day when everything suddenly clicked. It happened so gradually that I almost didn’t notice how far we’d come.
After all those weeks of worrying about every milliliter, pumping, supplementing, and questioning whether my body could do this, we had reached a point where breastfeeding alone was working for us around 3 months in.
I can’t describe how meaningful that felt.
And of course, the journey still isn’t perfectly smooth. We’re now at 4.5 months, and recently we’ve encountered another challenge.
My daughter has started having some feeding difficulties. Sometimes she’ll latch eagerly, take a few sips, then arch her back, pull away, and cry. She also refuses the bottles completely.
We’re working with her pediatrician to understand whether reflux might be contributing to her discomfort.
It’s been frustrating, especially after everything we went through to establish breastfeeding.
But I’m trying to remind myself that not every difficult feeding means my supply is inadequate.
Babies change. Their needs change. New challenges come up. And just because something is difficult today doesn’t mean it will always be difficult.

What I wish I could tell myself in those early weeks
If I could go back and talk to the exhausted, emotional version of myself sitting on the couch with a pump attached to her breasts, these are the things I’d want her to know:
1. Your body isn’t failing you. Breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult, and struggling with it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.
2. Rest matters, too. I was so focused on doing more that I forgot how important it was to take care of myself. Getting a little more sleep helped me tremendously.
3. Progress doesn’t have to happen overnight. Our transition to exclusive breastfeeding took weeks of frequent, sometimes very long nursing sessions. Improvement was gradual, but it happened.
4. Supplementing isn’t failure. Formula and bottles helped us get through the early weeks. I’m grateful we had those options, and I don’t think they make our breastfeeding journey any less meaningful.
5. Your breastfeeding journey doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. Some moms exclusively breastfeed from day one. Some combo feed. Some exclusively pump. Some switch to formula. Every family deserves support and kindness.

I wanted to share this for anyone who’s currently in the thick of it.
If you’re staring at a pump with only a few drops in it, wondering why your body isn’t cooperating…
If you’re exhausted from nursing, supplementing, and pumping around the clock…
If you’re afraid that giving your baby a bottle means you’ll never be able to exclusively breastfeed…
Or if you’re simply feeling like your body is failing you…
I see you. I’ve been there.
I can’t promise that everyone’s journey will turn out like mine. But I hope you know that the way things are going today doesn’t necessarily determine how they’ll be a month or two from now.
Sometimes progress is slow, messy, and almost impossible to see while you’re living through it.
And sometimes, one day, you look back and realize just how far you’ve come.
Sending love to all the moms who are struggling right now. You’re not alone. ❤️


r/breastfeeding • • 4h ago

Weaning HELP! Weaning after 7+ years!

3 Upvotes

I am getting ready to wean my last baby (following her cues- not my choice!! 😩) I have 5 kids, ages 7, 5, 4, 2, and 1 and have been breastfeeding since my oldest was born (nursed through every pregnancy and tandem nursed after babies were born). FOR THE RECORD I am currently only nursing 1, not all 5 lololol.

Anyway I’ve NEVER fully weaned bc there was always someone to breastfeed and I’m so curious about what to expect when my body finally doesn’t need to produce milk anymore. Any insight?? THANKSSS


r/breastfeeding • • 4h ago

Support Needed 2 week old baby not pooping

0 Upvotes

Hi, my 2.5 week old has gone 3 days without a poop now. My midwife isn’t worried because she’s already gained almost 2 pounds she’s mainly comfortable with ocasional grunts and groans she’s farting all the time she’s peeing so dang much like 7 diapers or more a day she’s nursing great and is exclusively breastfed. But why the heck is she not pooping?? I have 2 other kids and I’ve never experienced no poop this early.


r/breastfeeding • • 7h ago

Work Issues Can you help us change the law to protect breastfeeding?

24 Upvotes

Did you know in the UK we don't have a statutory right to:

- paid breastfeeding/expressing breaks

- a private, hygienic nursing space

Yet 130 countries around the world DO 🤷

It's time to change the law!

I've launched a petition to do just that.

No woman should have to choose between breastfeeding her baby and earning a living.

If you think this too, please sign and share the petition:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/779114

N.B. you must be a British citizen to sign.


r/breastfeeding • • 8h ago

Celebration! Made it one year with twins 🎉

60 Upvotes

Y’all, it has been a YEAR. My preemies struggled to latch and stay awake for feeds. I struggled to build my supply and position them. (I thought I was going to be able to tandem nurse, lol.) They developed a feeding aversion when I got my period back at 4 months PP, which lasted for two straight months for one baby and showed back up during my period for months after that. They got eight teeth each, and drew blood biting. They have egg and dairy allergies, and I have a gluten intolerance, so I’ve been having to feed the three of us without three major ingredients. They are just now letting me night wean them. This mama is tired and hungry.

But here we are, twelve months in, and still going.


r/breastfeeding • • 8h ago

Discussion Weaned toddler still obsessed

2 Upvotes

Hi all, I am pregnant and have a 2 year old, I weaned him the month I got pregnant around 22 months and he was mostly okay with it. I am a little over halfway through my pregnancy now and have milk coming in already and all of a sudden he’s obsessed with my boobs again. I think he can smell it?

I’m so worried about breastfeeding my newborn in front of my toddler. Obviously we will establish boundaries and I’ll try to have conversations about it with him before I give birth, but I think he’s going to be really upset and that’s going to make breastfeeding really difficult with the new baby. For more context, I am with my toddler 24/7 and we are besties. Lol.

Any advice or similar stories that turned out ok?


r/breastfeeding • • 10h ago

Support Needed Sad about my 2 yo self weaning

6 Upvotes

I've been breastfeeding my son since birth. Like many people, I found it so hard the first 6 months or so, but eventually I realized I actually really liked nursing an older baby. So I kept going. Then around 18 months or so it got SUPER easy and I realized I liked nursing a toddler even more. By that point, we were in a good 2x a day rhythm, morning and night.

Then when he turned 2, I started to experiment with "don't offer, don't refuse". For awhile he still wanted to nurse 1-2x a day. Then just at night. Then we had a few nights where he wanted to skip straight to his books. I thought those nights were flukes. They weren't. Not even 2 weeks later, he stopped asking completely. After a few days, I started asking him (I know, I know) and he very clearly said no, he doesn't want to, he wants to read books. And he hasn't nursed since. He's just shy of 2.5.

It's been 2 weeks and I'm overcome with feelings of sadness that my breastfeeding journey has come to an end. I didn't expect him to stop so abruptly. I'm so sad that the last time I nursed him, I didn't even know it was the last time. I'm worried that I pushed him to stop before he was ready. And what's making all of this worse is my friends and family are so dismissive of my feelings. They're like "what did you expect to happen, he's 2, it was time". I don't know what I expected. I'm just really, really sad.


r/breastfeeding • • 10h ago

Nipple/Boob issues 3.5 months and still trying...

2 Upvotes

I feel like we have done everything under the sun to help my baby and my nipples. Lip/tongue frenectomy, chiropractor, cranial sacral therapy, multiple Lactation consultants, pediatrician. We have dealt with silent relfux and poor weight gain. Things are slowly coming together but my nipples have only gotten worse as time goes on. We are told she has a high marrow pallet and set back jaw, along with my short nipples due to previous inversion. I use coconut oil, silverettes, hot packs, and lanolin before showering. At this point, after everything iv done to try and breastfeed this baby, I don't want the pain to finally be what breaks the camels back. They turn white at the end between feeds and purple during. I was given a steroid cream that only made them dry out and get even worse. Almost four months, time to give up?


r/breastfeeding • • 11h ago

Support Needed Nursing while pregnant

1 Upvotes

Help!!
I’m almost 8 weeks pregnant and I’m still exclusively nursing my 14 month old. I don’t want to force her to wean and I’m following her lead in terms of weaning. She typically doesn’t care to nurse all day but is still nursing to bed and overnight. It is SO painful. Any tips / suggestions? Does the pain get better? Her latch has always been comfortable/ not painful. But I immediately knew I was pregnant because of how painful nursing was / has been recently. I have been waking up in so much pain and with raw nipples because of the nursing overnight. Is there anything that has helped you all?!


r/breastfeeding • • 11h ago

Rant/Venting In a difficult breastfeeding era

11 Upvotes

I’m a SAHM to a 10 month old and have done EBF since birth. We got through the rough patches at the beginning, did the pumping thing while working before I left, and since staying home it’s been pretty much smooth sailing.

Except lately breastfeeding has felt soooo difficult. I’ve never understood the term “touched out” more than now. So I have some qualms I’d like to vent about:

-He never just sits to eat anymore except before bedtime. He pulls off every few seconds no matter what position. Even in a quiet dark room. Sometimes I feed him in his car seat in the backseat just to get in a solid feeding session. While he’s playing, sometimes I lay or sit with my boobs out because he’ll stop and nurse intermittently. JUST SIT AND EAT PLEASE

-He prefers one of my boobs to the other. I try to get in more nursing on rightie but leftie is becoming chapped from him mostly eating on that side.

-He wants to nurse ALL NIGHT. Probably because he won’t sit and eat during the day. We bedshare with a sidecar crib but I can’t always sleep in one position to nurse him.

-Ugh the biting. I thought we got over it after he bit me a few times a few months ago and I shoved his face in my boob to stop him. But he’s teething again and has bit me a couple times this week. It makes me scared to nurse him.

-The twiddling! I can’t take it! He has never done this before but has started. Sometimes I have to keep my other boob covered with my hand because it icks me out so bad.

I’m planning on weaning at 12 months but all this has me thinking switching to formula now wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I know it’s all normal baby stuff. Ive come this far so I’m gonna tough it out but someone please tell me it gets better 😭😭


r/breastfeeding • • 11h ago

Rant/Venting Everything that went wrong on my breastfeeding journey.

6 Upvotes

My baby is 12 weeks old and we’re still struggling along on this journey. I finally found a good LC who has helped me devise a plan to make sure my baby gains weight, as her growth was faltering. We’re working to save my breastfeeding relationship with my baby despite the fact that I’ll need to supplement with more formula and getting my baby’s tongue tie addressed. But I’m grieving this hard and I think writing it out will be helpful.

So here is how we got to where we are.

  • When my baby struggled to latch and suck in hospital, they insisted I give her formula. She was better on the bottle so they basically said problem solved. 
  • I asked to use the hospital pump but they were so busy that they forgot about me. I would have had to stay overnight for a second night to use it and it was so hot on the recovery ward (UK hospitals aren’t air conditioned!) and my husband couldn’t do another night sleeping on a yoga mat on the ground. We needed to go home. I thought I’d be able to figure out pumping on my own but nope. 
  • My nipples were bleeding when I got home. My baby was starving so I panicked and got some formula to give her until my nipples could recover. I tried pumping but had the wrong flange size and a bad pump so couldn’t pump enough to replace the formula. 
  • No one explained that supplementing would kill my supply and that I only had a few weeks to bring it in before it would be fixed at that level permanently.
  • A health visitor flagged her failure to gain weight even with the supplements but essentially traumatised me with how she reacted to the low weight gain -- like I was starving her on purpose. I panicked and gave my baby more formula, convinced I wasn’t capable of making more milk. 
  • Everyone I saw said her latch looked fine. It was absolutely not fine. Her nose was smushed into my boob because she couldn’t tip her head back, which I didn’t learn until we saw an osteopath six weeks in.
  • The midwife who performed the tongue tie assessment at the children’s hospital said she had no visible tie and cutting it wouldn’t make a difference. Lo and behold at 12 weeks my baby has a visible tie and will probably now need a division. 
  • The first LC I saw corrected my positioning but didn’t do her own tongue tie assessment, nor did she do a weighted feed. 
  • It’s so long between appointments that I didn’t realize she wasn’t gaining weight on the reduced supplements until she was six weeks old. 
  • I went back to the same LC with my weight gain concerns and she said she wasn’t worried, all babies grow at their own rate and maybe my baby was just genetically programmed to be tall and skinny. 
  • I didn’t do as much research on how breastfeeding works as I should have / could have before the baby came because my beloved cat was dying of cancer and passed just a week before my baby came. I went into this journey blind, trusting professionals who apparently didn’t know what they were doing. 

Despite all of this, my baby and I still love breastfeeding. We‘re going to persist as long as we can. I’m so sad this has all worked out the way it has. My dream is to wean her off the supplements if I can get my milk supply up, though I don’t know if it’s possible. I’m just hoping I can keep breastfeeding my baby.


r/breastfeeding • • 12h ago

Support Needed Increasing milk supply - pumping advice

2 Upvotes

My baby is 4.5 months old, exclusively breastfed and I have never pumped to feed.

Till 2 weeks ago he was gaining weight within his growth centile.

However upon checking his weight today he has not gained any weight in past two weeks. In fact it’s gone down 0.05 kg. My gut feeling is that I am not producing enough milk and he’s not getting enough?

I’d like to start using pumping to increase my supply but I have never used the pump before so am seeking advice on how to go about it like how often should I pump? Do I pump after a feed for a little while or should I do? Is this likely to increase my supply?

Anything else I should consider regarding my baby’s lack of weight gain in 2 weeks?

My baby is generally content between feeds his wet nappy output has decreased in the past 4-5 days but I think that’s due to the cold and that restricting his feeding a little bit. In terms of dirty nappies thes days since the past three weeks he only poos every couple of days and at times has gone 4-5 days without a dirty nappy but I spoke to the doctor about it and was told that at this stage that should not be concerning as long as he doesn’t look constipated.


r/breastfeeding • • 13h ago

Support Needed Positive stories of overcoming bottle refusal & tips/tricks

2 Upvotes

My 3mo LO started daycare this week. They said that he screams and screams and screams all day and refuses the bottle unless he is absolutely starving.

In preparation for daycare we started introducing one bottle a day for the past couple weeks. He would take one first thing in the morning and then breastfeed the rest of the day.

Apparently this still did not help with the daycare transition…

Any success stories or advice? It breaks my heart thinking about him crying all day


r/breastfeeding • • 4h ago

Pumping Pumping is the only thing that saved me

2 Upvotes

Hear me out, I hate pumping! So much. I dread it everyday at work. However, after much research, I decided to pump 3-4x a day in addition to nursing for the first 6-8 weeks in prep of going back to work and ebf after 8 weeks.
Maternity leave was 12 weeks (Yay USA). So, by pumping extra in the beginning before my supply regulated, I was able to create a stash for when I returned to work and I didn’t end up with an oversupply.
Now at almost 5 months PP, my little one’s intake has increased and I’m having to rely on my freezer stash a lot.
And I have nothing against formula, except for the cost.
Just putting this out there for moms that are able to pump in the beginning, do so.


r/breastfeeding • • 4h ago

Undersupply Reintroducing night feeds at 8 months??

3 Upvotes

Baby started sleeping through the night at about 8 or 9 weeks. She’s been 75th percentile for most of her life except she has recently dropped to 50th. LC recommended introducing a middle of the night feed to help with this. I will of course do this but I feel like this might also put me in the pattern of needing to continue night feeds for a while. Has anyone reintroduced night feedings because of bad weight gain at this age? How long did you have to do it?

Some other info - baby has been crawling for two months now and is super active. I also have resumed my menstrual cycle and it definitely lowers my supply for the second half of the month. I think we’ve hit some supply issues when she needed a calorie boost and she does seem quite hungry at the breast.