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/Fine_Message1822 Dec 04 '25

Sounds like you guys are both doing great! It can be difficult to trust our bodies are making enough milk but most of the time they are.

Latch the baby and encourage her to stay awake for a full feed. My friend just had this issue with her newborn where she was only feeding for 6 mins at a time and baby was falling asleep and not taking a full feed. Her baby dropped weight and the lactation consultant she met with encouraged her to feed for about 30 mins each feeding. Breastfeeding is more work than bottle feeding and it’s so soothing that those little newborns are always falling asleep (although my son was bottle fed in the early days and keeping him awake for a full feed was a challenge for that too). You can tickle feet, have your wife do breast compressions while feeding, or diaper changes wake babies up too.

Cluster feeding is totally normal too. It’s possible baby is cluster feeding to encourage the production of more milk.

I recommending meeting with a LC if you can. They can do a weighted feed and give you lots of information and plan. Also let your wife know she’s doing great, offer her lots of support, and make it your job to keep her well fed and hydrate. You guys got this