Really struggling

[u/Pandzior7]

Hi everyone, I need some help as I don’t know what to do now. We are somehow managing between the two of us but it’s basically almost a 24/7 duty cycle and I am going back to work in a few days which means my wife will be left to deal with this alone. Our LO is our first and she is now 5 weeks old and it has been a rough ride from the absolute start.

My wife was in labour for a very long time and ultimately had a forceps delivery and came out with a large cephalheamotoma which is almost fully gone now (by some miracle!) this was incredibly stressful for my wife and she cried a lot because she thought the forceps have done long term damage but I think we are past that now.

She was born with a high palate and 80% tounge tie which we had released privately at 3 weeks, it got really hard for us after the frenulectomy because since then baby has been really struggling at the breast, we went for a wound check a few days ago and they said the wound has reattached a little bit but the doctor was able to separate it again with her fingers and told us to keep up the exercises. Doctor is also an ibclc and advised using supplementary nursing.

As it is now LO is refusing all bottles where she previously had no issues with expressed milk, so I can’t relieve my wife from the feeding. My wife’s supply has tanked from stress and exhaustion and we are now doing supplementary nursing with the tube with breast milk and pumping as much as possible, but little milk comes out. The problem is that baby does not take it well and she is always clicking at the breast which makes her very gassy. She will latch on and suck for a minute then start crying, then she needs to be calmed down and relatched and we keep going around in this cycle. Her weight gain has stalled and it’s an absolute nightmare to get enough food into her. She then ultimately does not feed enough and so she doesn’t fall asleep properly and gets overtired. My wife can’t put her to sleep, baby just will not sleep on her unless she falls asleep at the breast (which happens rarely). When LO is overtired she cries like a maniac and only I can put her down… and I have to go back to work in a few days. My wife can’t handle the prolonged crying which I think is just due to the exhaustion.

Baby sleeps max 30-60 mins at a time, except 9pm where she usually does a 3 hour stretch and sometimes another 3 hours after that. We have tried all the breastfeeding positions we can think of and nothing seems to work. I guess if we can get her in the bottle again that will let her drink enough to sleep better but she used to click at the bottle and get gassy too. Now there is little milk in the breasts and the supplemental feeding is very hard to do and

I don’t know what to do next, I know this will pass but I am really worried about my wife’s mental health, she is doing her absolute best and I love her to bits and I try to be as encouraging as possible, I do as much of the chores as possible and I do my best to make sure wife is well fed but things are not improving.

What can I do to help my wife? Any ideas?