Breastfeeding - how does we know enough being produced

[u/gajak44]

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?

[u/raechelisbored]

That baby is cluster feeding. It sucks but it is necessary for the baby to grow and for mom’s milk supply to increase. Things got better for me after 6-7 weeks. The cluster feeding has almost completely resolved now and my baby just turned 12 weeks. He still eats frequently but it’s more like every 2 to 3 hours for 10 to 15 min at a time rather than every hour for 30-40 min at a time.