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[quote=Anonymous]It’s totally fine to do what you need to feed baby. Think of it like medicine if you have to, you would never deprive your baby of medicine if they needed it just because other people don’t, etc. you would just be grateful we live somewhere we have safe and effective options. That’s what helped me get over the hurdle.

Since it sounds like if you could resolve a few things, you’d be interested in perhaps at least combo feeding, here are some things that saved breastfeeding for me:

-Combo feeding usually works at this stage so it doesn’t have to be all or nothing especially as long as you can put baby to your breast fairly frequently. Once your supply regulates then it might be a different story, but honestly if you need a break just get a case of ready to feed 2oz and start with that from time to time. I did and my baby is EBF at 5 months old. From there you can see how baby does with the formula and see what works. I would try to breastfeed but if after hours nothing was working and I needed a break, my husband would try a bottle (early on we had to because of weight and dehydration and we basically just offered small every three hours or so to start but breastfed in between). I did occasionally pump if it was a longer break but otherwise basically never pump. I would not pump to avoid formula, personally.

-After much research, I found the following two resources helpful and helped guide me towards what practitioners were appropriate for the issues we were experiencing. Ultimately my baby had a kind of combination of mild issues that combined to make her early feeding a nightmare. She was born super alert at 41 weeks with no jaundice so on paper it should have been a piece of cake. But she has a few (relatively mild, that I don’t want or need to seek treatment for at this point) anatomical things that were identified later that made effective feeding difficult for her. She also can’t use a pacifier, she doesn’t really want to, but she also can’t. Bottles aren’t too great either and why we abandoned combo feeding well before my supply regulated, but it’s kind of unusual for that to happen.

https://youtu.be/rbbsPjg8Y5I

https://education.possumsonline.com/sites/default/files/Gestalt%20breastfeedingJHL2017_0.pdf (I know it’s a lot to read, but if you start with the video you’ll be most of the way there, so you can delve into this one if you want)

-My baby ultimately for whatever reason as a newborn was super easily triggered into a sensitive state. She screamed for hours a day and aggressively breastfed for hours at a time (not like every hour, like for multiple hours and would wake and scream if I tried to unlatch etc) even after I worked out her latching. The only thing that could remotely calm her down was this chain breastfeeding so that plus her difficulty drinking from bottles as well made me feel like it was the best option to just keep going and luckily found a system that worked. I know people will say well she was probably starving: I did weighted feeds, etc and she got enough I guess because she continued to grow, it just wasn’t easy for her to do that and she also needed to regulate her sensory system through feeding.

Anyway, the “cross cradle” holding their neck that’s pushed works well for many but grabbing the back of my baby’s neck triggered her reflexes or her sensitivities or something and she would fight and freak out. So early on that was a huge issue and I found a lactation consultants who helped with that and basically early on I laid her on a small throw pillow on my lap and then gently kinda rolled her toward my nipple so nothing was grabbing her (similar to the video but I used a pillow). For this technique I’ve also seen some people used a thin pad or their bassinet pad so they could try to lay baby down safely later but my baby also didn’t lay down at all for weeks, that’s another story maybe. My baby’s latch was atrocious “on paper” but when I got her positioned naturally and kind of let her do what she needed, it was way less painful and did kinda “adjust” like the second resource says.

It’s a lot to write and I almost feel bad about that, idk, I just know it was a nightmare for me at one week so whatever you do just take care of yourself, you can’t pour from an empty cup. But I hope this could help at all or even if it just seems like “okay that’s too much that’s crazy” maybe it can cement the decision to try formula. There are many safe options out there, your child will thrive with your love and care. But I felt like maybe it could help someone if they possibly want to give something a last try or just combo feed a little longer since I just kept getting the same advice that didn’t really work. And also I think it’s presented as all or nothing early on when combo feeding is at least potentially gonna work out (I don’t want to overstate anything because I haven’t done clinical research or whatever). Also my baby became way easier at 3 months old and by 4 months had basically stopped the crying completely and much more efficient at eating. So if that just gives you a light at the end of the tunnel either way. 
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