Hey all.

My baby lost more than the 10% of her birth weight which caused her paediatrician to advice me to combine feed. But giving her the bottle seemed to make breastfeeding harder.

With bloody nipples, incredible pain and feeling like a failure I gave up trying to breastfeed at night and only pumped.

Oddly even with the state of my nipples pumping was painfree.

My baby will be 3 weeks old tomorrow and has since regained all her lost weight. My nipples have healed and my midwife has advised me to put the pump away and solely breastfeed and bottle feed this week and see if we can increase my supply.

I’m currently trying to put her to the breast for 15 minutes on both sides before offering her a bottle of 90ml formula (I was consistently pumping 30ml so going on the rough estimate of her getting 30ml from my boobs she should only need 60ml of the 90ml bottle).

Sometimes she does great and feeds for the 15 minutes on both sides and takes 60ml from the bottle just like the midwife recommended.

Other times she will only drink for a few minutes before refusing to latch any further. At this point I’m trying to just take each feed at a time and not get frustrated but it’s proving really difficult.

I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that I’m going about this the right way.

Last night was hellish, it was really hard to get her to latch and then she would suck a few times and let go so I felt like I was fighting with her more than feeding her. During the day I got out my nipple shields again as my nipples have become sore (probably because she’s not latching properly sometimes) and the feeds have gone easier.

Anyone else out there also combination feeding? And will I really be able to boost my breast supply enough to eventually drop the bottle?