Supply at night feeds

[Lanhydrock]

Can anyone shed some light on what might be happening here, please?

DD is eight weeks old and ebf. On a couple of occasions now in the last fortnight I've had no/very little milk when trying to feed her at 3am-ish. I haven't had this problem at any other time of day. In terms of what happens, DD tries to feed as normal, I don't feel a let down (normally I get quite a strong one shortly after she starts feeding), DD becomes very fretful and gets increasingly frustrated. I attempt to feed her for about 20 mins. When I try to hand express there is hardly anything there.

DD has just had a bottle of ebm so is now happy and I've had a snack in case it's blood sugar issues (although I ate and drank normally yesterday).

I feed DD on demand but to give you an idea of the normal pattern she tends to feed at 6am then every 2 1/2 - 3 hours through the day. I then feed her at 9pm ish and express straight after the 9pm feed. DH gives her a bottle of ebm at around 11:30pm and DD wakes me at around 3am for a feed.

Any advice on how to ensure I have milk for the 3am feed greatly appreciated.

[Loraline]

I'm no expert but two things to think about. Firstly are you hydrated enough? I find it thirsty work and need to make sure I'm drinking enough water. Secondly try skin to skin feeding. It helps stimulate your supply and apparently babies feed more when feeding this way, which will again stimulate more milk production.

[Lanhydrock]

Thanks Loraline. I think you might be right about me not being hydrated enough - I drink plenty through the day but not much overnight.

My milk supply seems to be all over the place at the moment - hopefully things will settle down over the next few weeks.

[ICJump]

It might be worth dropping the expressing/bottle session for a week or so to help boost your supply. Expressing isn't as effective as at the breast feeding.

[ICJump]

Sorry that posted rather than me finnishing my edits.

Anyway you could drop the express/bottle feed and do the 11pm feed at the breast.
You can also work at a few things to help your let down. Things like being warm and comfy, taking a few deep breaths, evening shutting your eyes and do visualizations maybe of your let down or even things like waterfalls.

[Lanhydrock]

Thanks ICJump. I happened to do the 11pm feed last night rather than DD having a bottle and didn't have any issues overnight so will try that for the next few days. Only problem is that it means giving up my 5 hours of undisturbed sleep! But obviously worth it to make sure DD has milk when she needs it.

I'll also try your visualisation suggestion if I have further problems, thank you. It makes sense that there would be a psychological element to it. I wonder whether me getting worried at the letdown not happening when I expected it to actually exacerbated the problem the other day.

[ICJump]

Yes it's possible the worry about not letting down is inhibiting a letdown. Like when you need to relax and someone says relax and you get all tense because you can;t relax