10wo reducing feeds

[MaverickSnoopy]

Dd2 had her jabs last week. She is mixed fed and up until that point had been having 5 bottles of formula/BM (6oz) each day (give or take) and in addition was bf by me about 10% each day. She was tracking well on the centile chart. My intention was to increase bf and reduce formula (bf had not gone to plan when she was first born) actually round about this time, although slowly and still giving a bottle or two at night.

After the jabs she suddenly started "snacking" and only wanting 2 or 3oz every few hours. Now she seems to want even less and so I have rapidly upped the amount of bfs in between bottles to compensate as I am concerned that she is not eating enough, I was planning to do this anyway. However my issue is that I still don't feel that she can be getting enough as I have only increased the bf'ing over the last two days and don't believe that my supply will have increased sufficiently yet. In addition she seems to only bf from m for 5 or 10 minutes.

When I say she is not eating, I mean she is actively pushing the bottle out of her mouth after 3oz having not eaten sometimes for 5 hours or so (sometime of course she will accept a bf or two or three in between). She is definitely more receptive to bf'ing. She has gone from having approx 25 - 30oz formula a day plus some bf to around 10 - 15oz formula a day plus some additional bfs. Regardless of wanting to introduce more bf'ing I don't feel that this is happening the right way and that there is an underlying problem.

She is mostly happy but her number of wet and dirty nappies has decreased. I was previously changing around 8 sodden nappies a day which included 2 dirty ones. She is probably now having around 6 with at least two dry after 3-4 hours. There is definitely serious fussiness between bottles of formula where she wants food, but she won't take more than the 3oz max and sometimes when I bf and she cluster feeds she screams as if there is nothing there.

I phoned the HV this morning who was lovely but not very helpful. I received a range of advice including, it's probably the jabs; she's probably having a growth spurt and trying to increase your supply (as I wasn't really bf'ing very much before this started surely she would be asking for more formula if this was the case); if she's happy then she's fine. Overall she felt that everything was normal but that if I was still concerned after the weekend to phone back. She also said that if there was a problem she would have reduced wet nappies and dry ones after 3-4 hours, when I said that was happening she back tracked and said if she was happy she was probably fine. When I said there was definite grumpiness she reverted to saying it was probably a growth spurt.

So I'm taking to MN for a bit of advice. Final addition - although her overall quota of sleep is the same as normal she is having much longer condensed naps which has coincided with all of this. Any thoughts would be very welcome.