That's the very firm message that is presented from all directions. Even the formula manufacturers print it on all their packaging. Reports I've seen about and comparing formula foods all start with half a page telling you how none of them are as good as real breast milk! The hospital has counsellors on hand to help you with breast feeding and Cow & Gate provide a midwife helpline who are also happy to help with breast feeding advice.

This is great when you need a little bit of support, some technical information on how to aid attachment or a new position to stop your arm aching. But when you'd really like to breast feed and it's just not going so well, and all they can offer is "keep trying" it adds so much extra pressure and extra guilt to the idea of giving up that it's actually not very helpful at all.

With Edward a little over two weeks old, he has lost nearly 15% of his birth weight, is still very jaundice and does not appear to be gaining weight at all. Each feed is taking somewhere between 1 hour and 1.5 hours and Edward is generally awake and hungry again 1 - 1.5 hours after he had last finished. At various times we have (at the advice of the hospital) been offering formula top-up feeds, which then take a further 30 minutes or so, plus all of the bottle preparation and cleaning time. Edward has visible bags under his eyes. Liz and myself are somewhat (ie extremely, to the point of regular, unfounded frustrations) sleep deprived (about 4 hours in each 24, with no more than 1 hour at a time!) and Liz is especially feeling very worried about Edward not putting on weight and quite stressed by the fact that it might be her breast feeding that is at fault.

When we visited the hospital about Edward's jaundice and talked to them about this, they continued to encourage breast feeding, saying that we should give it longer and that breast milk can take a couple of weeks to fully kick in. However they didn't volunteer to actually witness him feeding or to check how it was working - despite us being in the hospital across two feeding times.

After several days of discussing it, we have finally decided to gradually transition Edward from breast feeding onto formula feeding.

Just a day later, the transformation in the house is remarkable. We all seem to be so much more relaxed, Edward is taking his formula feeds in a much shorter time and is sleeping for a little longer afterwards. The full transition will probably take several weeks, but hopefully this will be the start of his recovery from jaundice and regaining of his missing weight.

We suspect the problem to have been caused by a number of factors. Edwards tongue tie and jaundice led to him not breast feeding well initially, which probably also caused Liz not to develop her milk supply quite as quickly as normal. Even after Edward had his tongue tie fixed, his feeding ceased to be so painful for Liz, but didn't really improve in any other way. In fact, he now often "plays" with his tongue and seems to get it wrong, ending up pushing away with it instead of suckling. Due to his jaundice, the hospital also started us on top-up bottle feeds while we were there, apparently bottle feeding babies early can cause "nipple confusion" which could well have also have contributed.

Let's now hope Edward manages to develop well on his "Closer than ever to breast milk" formula milk. I'll keep you posted! :-)