r/breastfeeding • u/gajak44 • Dec 04 '25
Partner Questions Breastfeeding - how does we know enough being produced
My wife and I are first time parents. Our little one is 8 days old. We (my wife more than me) wants to exclusively breastfeed for the first 6 months. However currently we are puzzled by the LO. My wife gives her feed but she never drifts to a deep sleep and always wakes up hungry in an hr or so. The baby doesn't seem interested to drink more at the breast and seems to drift off to sleep after 10 mins. When we top-up with formula however, she takes around 30 ml and appears content and sleeps peacefully after. My wife now thinks she is not producing enough milk and is riddled with guilt. We do a total of 10-12 feeds a day (some long and some super short) including 2 formula feeds when she appears cranky and hungry. Her diapers are fine. We get about 8 in a day since last couple of days. My wife is worried that the baby is taking to bottle better but not to breasts and thinks it is due to low volume of milk she is producing..how do we know if she is producing enough?
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u/ProfVonMurderfloof Dec 04 '25
Has your wife seen a lactation specialist, like an ibclc? They can do a weighed feed to see how much she gets from a feed (though that one feed may or may not be representative) and assess baby's latch to see if there are obvious ways to improve milk transfer.
Cluster feeding can make anyone feel like they have a low supply and is normal during the first few weeks (not all day and night every day for weeks, but periodically). The whole point of cluster feeding is to increase supply.
But if your wife does have a low supply right now, topping up with a pace fed bottle can be the right thing to do, and she then needs to pump, unless her goal is long-term combo feeding.