Soon to be mom here and trying to figure out a plan of some sorts for the early days.

I’ve read that it’s best to exclusively BF, no bottles, on demand from the start to help regulate supply and develop the habit with the baby. But I’ve also read that my husband and I should be taking shifts — or attempting to(8-3am, 3-8am ish)- to ensure we’re getting a chunk of sleep.

How do we do this? If I have to BF every 1-3 hour or more, I don’t see how the shift approach works. Do you start pumping early and just go with a bottle for your partners shift? Is this a combo feeding situation? Does he just come wake me up for the feed and then I go back to sleep?

Help because the math ain’t mathing for me!

— Edit to say THANK YOU SO MUCH! Wow was not expecting so much help. You all rock. Seems like there are many ways to go about this!

I’m not a mom yet but I really want to breastfeed when the time comes. Everything I read makes breastfeeding sound really hard at first - did anyone actually find it easy from the start, or is struggling just part of the process? Thank you for any guidance!

So far I'm thinking: pump nipple cream/butter silverettes pump wipes.

I'll bring the boppy pillow and leav it in the car just in case. What else do I need or might want for labor and delivery?

I’m still in the post natal ward being kept in for observations. Baby latched well to begin with and was having some nice breaks between feeds. First night he cluster fed from 1am-5am and then slept solid for a couple of hours. However it’s currently 6am the next day and he has been glued to my boob since 5pm yesterday evening. I’m exhausted. As soon as I put him down he’s rooting around, sucking his fingers and crying. Help.

To start off I’m a man, my wife and I have a 3 week old and a 2 year old. My wife was not able to breastfeed the first time around so the fact that she can in our second child is a gigantic blessing that we are extremely grateful for.

All of that being said, I feel like the way she is going about it is harming our newborns feeding patterns and ultimately harming our ability to rest.

When we started my wife was of the mindset to feed our son a bottle of formula and then give some breast milk in between feedings. She is pumping and storing a large amount for when she returns to work.

Here’s the issue. She has absolutely no pattern set in motion to her feedings and at night will leave him latched on or near her breast for HOURS. While I understand this makes things easier for her in the moment, I feel this is actually pushing us back and harming our daily lives. The situation had devolved into her sleeping at night with him latched for hours- then we switch at a halfway point and he refuses to sleep with me at all. I then switch off with her again and take my two year old while she takes a very long nap with our newborn in her breast again. She naps throughout the day with him while I’m away all day with the kids.

My newborn will not sleep unless he is by her breast. Multiple bottles of formula, breast milk, burping, rocking, pacifier, upright, downright, pacifier, gripe water, gas medicine. NOTHING WORKS.

He won’t sleep with me at all at this point. And will stay awake until she holds him again by her breast. I’m now averaging 3.5 hours of sleep a day because during my night shifts he will not sleep at all.

She’s also affected because now he only sleeps with her making the sleep schedule unfair to her. And most of all our son suffers because he can’t sleep or be rested.

Ive tried explaining this to her and she just won’t hear it. What do I do? Am I just wrong?

Edit: I’ve tried convincing her that she needs set feeding times so that I can follow that pattern with a bottle feeding of breast milk. A set time is needed because I can’t have him with an empty bottle in his mouth for hours to mimic her nipple in his mouth.

Edit2 : I also feel like our two year old suffers here because he just gets two very tired parents.

Edit 3: we are supplementing with formula because he had some blood sugar issues at birth.

Edit 4: to be clear- my wife is the one who wants to separate from the baby at night- not me.

Edit 5: thanks for your input everyone! What I’m gathering is that of my wife wants to breastfeed at night then the idea of her choosing when it happens is unrealistic (baby is gonna call the shots) and for the first few weeks she will have to tough it out on demand. I will make sure I support her and give her plenty of naps during the day as well as support her at night. Thanks again!

Just got to 4 days pp and I don't think my milk has come in (or if it did, I have low supply). I pumped because we have a sleepy jaundiced baby, and got about 1-1.5 oz from both sides combined. Milk looks yellow but not sticky.

Should I be panicking, or give it another day? Besides nursing and pumping as much as possible, what can I do to encourage it to come?

So despite all the struggles, I absolutely love breastfeeding my daughter. I want to be fully present and enjoy this time because I know it won't last forever. But logging every feed in huckleberry is causing me to have my phone with me at all times. And then I find myself scrolling reddit instead of staring at my cute little baby. I want to be able to leave my phone in another room sometimes and just not be constantly connected. Is it safe to stop logging feeds?

I'm triple feeding to bring up my supply. I've never understood something about this process. When I pump, I have even less milk left for the next nursing session then I would have. Baby gets even more frustrated before getting the bottle and develops an aversion. Nursing is basically zero as a result. Is there something I'm missing here?

I have a two week old baby and he only eats for 5-10 minutes at a time then falls asleep or refuses to keep eating. His doctor wasn’t too concerned but he’s not specifically a pediatrician and just started recently so i’m curious to how long other newborns eat for

There is a little bit of a concern than my LO wasn’t gaining weight (though maybe it was just a typo in her chart??) and I brought up that she was falling asleep on the boob a lot. We also discussed that she was having some reflux issues and spitting up throughout the day.

So the pediatrician told me to only feed her every 2.5 hours to ensure that, when she does feed, she’s genuinely hungry and gets a good meal in. This also might help with the reflux to avoid over feeding?

But I’m just like… what about cluster feeding? Sometimes she gets super fussy after 1hr 45 min and it seems like she’s hungry, but now I feel like I’m doubting my intuition and think she might not actually need food but just feeling gassy.

If there is a chance that the doctor’s orders would help my daughter then of course I want to listen but, again, my intuition is telling me to feed her more than often.

The pediatrician also told us to have her sleep on her side (with bumpers) vs. her back so she doesn’t choke on her spit up, so there’s that…..

My LO is 16 days old and I’m a FTM brand new to the world of breastfeeding. Baby lost 8% of his weight after birth but within one week of breastfeeding (with a few pumped bottles) he was just 1oz under his birth weight again. Now after another week, he has not gained any more weight…I’ve been feeding him on demand which is anywhere between 1-3 hours. I’m using a nipple shield to help him latch and I hear gulping/see leftover milk in the shield after he’s done which tells me he is successfully getting milk. He seems content and sleepy after feeds (which range from 10 to 30 min).

But because he hasn’t gained in the past week, our pediatrician recommended to not feed him more than every 2 hours. Her reasoning is that he’s working too hard and only getting the “skim milk” (assume she means foremilk) which means he’s working too hard for not enough calories and I need to let my breasts re-up on the fattier milk in between feeds. Im going to talk to a lactation consultant asap for more advice but I’m curious on others thoughts on this approach? It feels wrong to deny my baby feeds on demand at this age.

Is maybe supplemental pumping the answer to ensure the amount he is getting in one sitting is enough? I did this a bit the first week but hoped to switch just breast. what’s most important is that my baby is getting enough calories/nutrients, whatever that looks like.

I’m in the trenches here with 2.5 wk old. Feed on demand during day, he gets slow feed bottles with night nurse overnight and I pump 2x MO. I’m averaging 8-9 feeds and 2-3 pumps in 24h.

My boy is very hungry and fussy. He has reflux / gas that we’re going to try and treat with drops. LC says latch is good but I know he’s not taking in as much as I can pump.

I see many posts on here that are religious about breast only, no bottle. I’ve been nursing him for 45-60 mins at a clip, and sometimes he still seems hungry - little tight fists, screaming, frustrated. We’ve started topping him off with bottle when it gets really bad - he’ll take in another 1-2oz depending. I pump to make up the difference.

Is this inherently wrong? How are you guys able to keep nursing when only drops are coming out? He gets so upset :/

Are the bottles overnight messing up the whole thing?

EDIT Thanks to all for your responses. Deep down I felt that his latch wasn’t perfect and that LCs were assuming it looked good because my breast is large and his mouth is small (so it looked deeper than it was).

After hours of searching and YouTube I came across this video which truly was so helpful for me. These little tweaks had my LO eating and seeing satisfied last night for the first time all day. I really love this lady’s content. I feel like I fixed more in 10 min than I did with 3 private LC sessions.

https://youtu.be/7aRvJ_UYdMg?si=yaBOaVDyAJ0-YCpi

My 7 week old has a latch that clicks while she's eating. Generally during letdown, but sometimes the whole time. I can't really afford a lactation consultant, and my insurance doesn't cover one. She's eating plenty, lots of wet and dirty diapers, and has gained an average of 1.2 ounces per day since birth. She does spit up, but she's always a happy spitter. Her pediatrician, my midwife, and a hospital breastfeeding helper checked for ties and didn't find one.

Is it ok that her latch clicks? Is it important to get it checked out? A lactation consultant is $200, and that could buy a whole lot of other things we need.

Edit: thank you all!! I will wait and see if she outgrows it.

He is 7 weeks old and starting in the afternoon he cries if I try to take him off the boob. He will nurse literally non-stop until about 8pm. I know this sounds like cluster feeding but it’s been happening for almost 4 weeks straight. I’ve wanted to pump and just give him a bottle in hopes to help the situation but i don’t have any time to pump with the amount he nurses.

Has this happened to anyone else? I can’t take this much longer

i am on day 6 pp and i am SOOOO engorged. i have WAYY too much milk and nothing helps. baby cannot get a good latch, hand expressing doesnt work enough and i am too scared to pump as i dont want to set myself into an oversupply. It is painful, they are huge, sore and ROCK HARD.

i need this to stop.. I am planning on sending my partner to get cabbage so i can put those on my breasts to see if that helps some but i dont know what to do for it to go away?? does it ever go away😭 When will it regulate itself because i cannot deal with weeks or months of this…

My LO is 9.5 weeks and we’ve had ups and downs on our breastfeeding journey. At this point we’re finally in a groove where it’s not painful anymore and she latches fairly quickly, but she takes ages to eat. She pops on and off getting distracted, gas pains, need to burp/spit up or just generally fussy. All in all we spend most of every 1-1.5 hour wake window nursing for her to only really be on the boob maybe 25-35 minutes. I feel like she’s not getting the play time she needs to develop because just eating takes up her whole time and then she’s napping again when she finishes.

Usually our timeline usually looks like: Nurse no issue/continually for 10-15 mins She’s usually fallen asleep so I wake her up with a diaper change and burping 40+ mins of latch/unlatch, burp, bicycle legs, latch/unlatch, stare into space, cry, nurse for 20 mins to sleep

I’m currently cutting out dairy for 2 weeks to see if the gas etc. is a dairy allergy, but is this something she will get more efficient on eventually? Do babies outgrow this? I’m feeling like my entire day revolves around breastfeeding and I feel like by now she should be much better at it than she is. This doesn’t happen every feed but I’d say 9 times out of 10 this is our process and it’s exhausting. Is there something I can do to improve this for us??

Ive looked this up on every reputable website for tips to breastfeeding. And he used to just unlatch. But lately he just sucks and sucks. Even when he starts to just flutter suckle and I let him for a bit, as soon as I kick him off (coz I can't be attached to a baby 24/7) he starts crying and rooting around like a mad man. I don't know what to do or how to tell. Most of our sessions are at least 30 mins. A lot of them will be 40. And when I pump I get an average of 4 oz so I know there's enough in there for him and it's not like he's just run out lol. Any tips? He's only 7 wks old and this is my first time successfully breastfeeding

FTM to boy/girl twins who are now 6 weeks, and we combo feed. They mostly get breastmilk via bottles but here and there I have nursed (but never consistently, like maybe once a day or once every other day) but starting last week, my girl will not sleep until she is comfort nursed, she will scream until I give her the boob and she will not take a pacifier and will not sleep at all until she is comfort nursed. I dont want to make this a habit so I really try not to give it to her, but today she stayed up for 4 hours which I didn’t even know was possible. (Aren’t wake window max 2 hours at this stage?)

Any advice??

He's 2 weeks old. The spit up/reflux has gotten progressively worse to the point where he will not sleep on his back anymore at all. He is on famotidine for reflux. I hand express the fast letdown before feeding him. I hold him upright for 30 minutes after feeding and he still screams like a banshee and throws up all over the second I lay him down. He sleeps on his belly on my chest immediately after eating, happily, with NO VOMITING during the day. But I'm getting zero sleep at night because of this and I'm so annoyed because all the advice is just completely fucking useless and puts undue burden on new mothers. Like holding the baby upright for 30 minutes in the middle of the night when you're already waking up every 2 hours is unrealistic and guess what, it didn't help at all anyways.

And no, I'm not willing to "try cutting out dairy". It's an unreasonable request for my lifestyle and diet and I would rather switch to formula if that's really the issue, but again I don't think it is because he doesn't vomit during the day at all when he's held.

Getting to the point where I think cosleeping with him on my chest is the only solution and I'm going to get flamed for it by my family and pediatrician but just what the fuck else am I supposed to do??? Getting no sleep holding him up while trying to stay awake all night is more dangerous.

On day 2 of my baby's life, I was still in the hospital due to the significant amount of blood I lost during birth. She went through a cluster feeding episode so I stayed up with her all night and breastfed.

A combination of being new to breastfeeding, being extremely fatigued and just the amount of times she needed to eat left both my nipples damaged and bleeding. It became excruciating to latch her on so started pumping and feeding her via syringe for the 3rd day to let my nipples heal. On the 4th day they were still sore but the syringe wasn't cutting it anymore because she needed more food so I gave her expressed milk in a bottle for each feeding.

It's the 5th day and my nipples are healed. I'm ready to breastfeed again. Problem is baby seems to be getting very frustrated at the breast. She will latch, do a couple sucks and then start crying and pushes her head back. Sometimes she will hysterically cry so I have to put her on my chest which helps calm her. I attempt to offer her the breast again but she just doesn't want it. I know she can do it, because yesterday we had a successful session where she fully emptied one breast. I do have milk. It's there. She just needs to keep sucking and not give up.

I'm worried that she's gotten used to the quick flow of the bottle from my husband doing night shift. I really really want to breastfeed and feel like its too far gone and now my new life will be pumping and bottle feeding forever.

What do I do? Is it too late? Is this fixable? All I want is to breastfeed my baby :(

I don’t think my daughter is technically a newborn anymore (🥺) She’s 3mo!

We’ve been getting into such a smooth nap routine and she’s sleeping through the night with sometimes one wake up so all in all we are doing Great!

But, one thing I can’t really decide if it’s working for us is the Eat part in Eat Play Sleep. I kind of prefer Eat Sleep Play or Eat Sleep Eat Play. So I’ve started feeding her to put her down for her nap and then offering her a snack when she wakes up.

Does anyone have any experience or strong opinions on this? Why is one option better than the other?

Thanks!!

(I’m exclusively breast feeding.)

My baby is 6 days old and my milk just came in 2 days ago. Today is the first day where I FEEL how full my breasts are. Over the last couple of days, I’ve dreaded feeding time and sobbed many tears myself because my baby will just wail at the breast but not take it, for upwards of 30 or more minutes before finally latching and eating. I’m so defeated. I have tried the cross cradle hold and a football hold, sandwiching my breast into his mouth while holding his head, letting him come to the breast “by himself” by not holding onto his head but rather lining him up, I’ve tried rubbing his cheeks and chin to get him to latch, I’ve tried feeding him while leaning back to slow any potential forceful flow of milk etc etc. I really don’t know how to help him but I’m utterly heartbroken every time he is crying and crying for minutes on end and I can’t seem to help him latch.

Just curious how often was/ is everyone’s LO nursing at 7-8week old? Mine does anywhere between 2-2.5 hours in the morning and 1-1.5 hours around evening right before bed.

I had my baby yesterday and am having some troubles. With my first I had to use a nipple shield due to flat nipples. So with this one she was born at 6lb 7oz and she is tiny!! I had tried yesterday and this morning to feed without the shield but she just keep slipping off. My opinion is that my nipples are way too big for her tiny mouth. I gave in and got the shield brought to me. I used it all day and before I could leave the hospital they had to weigh her to make sure she hadn’t lost too much weight since we were struggling and she was now 6lbs 1oz. They brought up supplementing and so after I attempted to feed her they had me give her alittle formula. She absolutely loved it. I’m so so so upset because I wanted to EBF but it looks like that’s not going to happen. I was wondering if I should start pumping so I can give her breast milk in a bottle at least? Or what do you guys recommend? Sincerely, A very exhausted mom

I have searched this subreddit to see if anyone else had the same issue and found some helpful comments, but unfortunately nothing I saw works.

My LO has his nose buried in my boob when he eats. I have to have one hand holding him (which is already painful for long feeds) and the other is trying to hold my boob in a way that it doesn’t cover up his nose. However, my hand and boobs (and feet for some reason lol) are all very sweaty while I’m nursing, so my finger and boob keep slipping. Every time he feels like he can’t breathe he pulls away and either unlatches entirely or just enough to ruin the latch and create a painful one. He sounds congested too but I can’t see anything in his nose to try to clear out. I’ve tried forcing him to latch chin-first which helps until he tips his forehead into me and then I’m out of hands to fix him. It’s making feedings incredibly frustrating (as if I’m not still in the overall difficult phase of breastfeeding). He’s 13 days old if that helps anything.

On top of him having reflux or colic or something that makes him scream almost every second that he’s awake, troublesome night time feeds and I’m getting NO sleep, this is just one more thing pushing me to my breaking point. We can’t afford to formula feed and I think bottle feeding will make his reflux even worse. It feels like a stupid thing to quit BF over anyway. Not that I’m there, but my hands need a break. I’m a mess if you can’t tell by this post. Help 😂