I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like a dairy cow!
Arwyn will take both bottle and breast, but only when he feels like it for the breast! Which means my supply is insufficient for him, and I've had to use the pumps to keep producing milk at all, which I then pour into his next bottle of formula.
but he's taking about 135ml per feed (between 4 and 5 oz), and I only make about 15 ~ 25 ml (less than 1 oz) each time so no option there, I'm not going to starve him!
I blame all the messing around at the hospital too - when he refused to breastfeed within the firsthour or so after he was born, they gave him formula. Then they took him off to an incubator on a different ward for the night and most of the next day, and when I asked for a breast pump I was told I couldn't have it until I could get out of bed the next day (caesarian meant I was stuck in bed with a catheter etc, you can bet the minute that thing was out I got fiance to get me a wheelchair and take me to the ward where my baby was!), then the next day I couldn't because "no-one has time to teach you to use it" (what's to learn? plug it in, switch it on, stick boob into it, hold it there and wait!) then it was in use because "we only have one for the whole ward because there's no demand for it" there were 4 beds in my room and 2 of us were asking for it and neither got it... no demand? in a ward with about 30 rooms of 4 women in each, plus some single rooms?? doesn't sound likely to me!
So he had formula while he wasn't with me too.
and in the mean time, my body wasn't learning how much to make by him feeding...
so I don't make enough.
I did breast feed him once I got him back on the ward with me but they tell me that my supply was already set by then, and Arwyn was lazy - only being bothered to suck for about a third of the time he was latched on. He was on there for 3 hours once and when I detatched him from me he was STILL crying with hunger. So I had no choice but to give him formula to top up his feeds from me. I'm just lucky the bottle feeds in hospital didn't cause "nipple confusion" and leave the poor little thing unable to understand that food is supposed to come from my boobs as well as from bottles. I now use tommee tippee closer to nature bottles, which claim to not cause nipple confusion as they are designed to replicate a boob.
I have an electric pump and a hand pump from the same range - the electric pump was much more expensive but it doesn't make my hands ache like the hand pump. the hand pump seems to work faster and has a harder suction but the electric one is much more like the amount of pressure the baby uses.
hand pump uses both hands, one to do the pumping while the other holds it in place.
the electric one I can use one handed, which means I can hold Arwyn with my other arm.
I feel at my most bovine when I've got the electric one on my right boob (because Arwyn doesn't like feeding from my right, no idea why) and Arwyn on my left boob.
Moo!
the boob lady (AKA "National Health Service breastfeeding support worker") says it's possible to increase my supply by pumping every time Arwyn feeds and could eventually get enough milk to feed him without formula. Great! except that he is a greedy little thing and since I'm not comfortable with the idea of constantly getting my boobs out in front of the kind, wonderful friend we're living with it would mean that I never left the bedroom for more than 30 min at a time, never mind getting any sleep. So that's not going to happen, really.
So I have a cow moment a couple of times per day, with breast feeding him directly any time I do so (if he's feeling co-operative about it), and figure he's getting the best I can give him either way now.
he's getting chubbier and chubbier so it must be doing him some good!
but the poo! ugh! he does one a day and like almost all babies with combined feeding (robin, is Ethan's the same?) his poo is GREEN! and it is so much it's too much for one nappy (diaper) to cope with
