slow weight gain/green poos/need tiktok to explain about hind/foremilk balance

[laksa]

Hi ladies,

My lo is now almost 14 weeks old and averages about 4/5 oz weight gain a week sometimes 6oz sometimes just 21/2oz. I posted a while back when she was just 2 weeks old about the fact that she only feeds for 5-10 mins max. Well despite the fact the health visitors kept telling me to top up with formula I have persevered (mainly due to the fact that she won't take a bottle for love nor money!) and we are still breastfeeding. I have taken her to the paediatrician as I suspected reflux but he just said she was small probably because her mother is and has dropped down the percentiles from the 50th to the 9th because she is readjusting. I still think she has reflux issues but keep doubting my supply.

therefore I have always tried to express some a day even though she won't take it in a bottle and it invariably gets wasted.

Sorry for such a long post, my question is this. In the last 3 weeks her poos have stayed green where previously we were only getting the odd green amongst mostly yellows. She also poos after most feeds (esp in the night) The only thing I have been doing differently is expressing off the boob that I have just fed of to try and make sure that my breast still produces hind milk. Previously I was expressing off the full breast, could this cause a problem. ie could me expressing off the breast I have just fed from mean that I am causing the breast to produce more milk in a sitting meaning that if she only feeds for a certain amount of time she is getting less hind milk than before? Hope that makes sense.

xx

p.s. she is still in her 0-3month baby gros and is quite skinny.

[VictorianSqualor]

I don't know the answer unfortunately, but have you tried calling one of the helplines, they'll know for sure.
The numbers are on my profile.
Well done for continuing to bf btw, it can be all too easy to stop when HCP's aren't beign supportive.

[laksa]

problem is she hasn't been weighed in 2 weeks due to xmas hols as my weigh day is a tuesday. i am very scared that she may have not gained anything.

thanks for the numbers victoria.

[fishie]

hind milk doesn't really exist. the first milk taken in a feed is more watery and as more is drunk by the baby it becomes richer and thicker. it isn't two different things though, just more dilute at first.

agree with vs, i think you need to speak to trained counsellor who can talk to you properly. and help you to regain any confidence lost by stupid health visitors.

dropping centiles isn't usually a disaster so long as she isn't actually losing weight. my ds went off the bottom of the centiles and was absolutely fine. i saw a paediatrician who said that concentrating on weekly weighing is not a good idea, better to look at medium term weight pattern. that said i do remember how worrying it was and of cousre you want to know EXACTLY to the microgramme what is going on.

[tiktok]

laksa, not sure what the issue is here, sorry.
Green poo is on the normal spectrum. Frequent poo is also on the normal spectrum (some babies tend to poo less often as they grow, but it's fine for this not to happen as well!).

There is no need to 'engineer' your milk in the way you are trying to do. I am not sure of the link you are making between your expressing and the breast producing hindmilk - sounds to me that you think the breast only produces hindmilk when it is 'empty'? Not true. Sorry if I have not understood, but I just don't 'get' why you think expressing would be helpful.

Hindmilk and foremilk are not two different milks that the breast produces. The milk produced by the breast is the same. Relatively empty breasts will have relatively fattier milk; relatively full breasts will have relatively less fatty milk.

Most mothers don't need to do anything about any of this. The baby and the mother's breasts and body work together and the baby gets what he needs to thrive and grow. Just feed as often as your baby would like to be fed, and then some, and your body will produce the milk and your baby will remove it and she will flourish!

Her weight and growth sound normal - the paed has confirmed this for you.

[laksa]

sorry tiktok, wasn't very clear!

I have been expressing because I was worried that if she was only drinking for a small amount of time then she maybe wasn't getting enough milk especially the hind milk. I thought that the early weeks of breastfeeding help establish your milk supply so if your baby wasn't emptying (i know they don't empty completely) your breast efficiently then your supply is fixed to only produce small amounts of milk. Therefore I was expressing in the hope that she would at some point drink for longer when she had a growth spurt or got the hang of it etc.

I thought that maybe if I was expressing at the end of a feed then I was somehow 'telling' the breast that the baby was taking a bigger feed than she actually was which might mean that the breast will be producing both more fore and hind milk but that if the baby was still only drinking for certain time then she might be getting more of the watery milk than the richer kind as she would still only be taking the same volume of milk into her stomach. Hope that makes some sense.

I have also heard that consistently green poos are bad and lots of people on this site seem to think it is a fore/hind milk imbalance.

Guess I'm worrying too much but she looks so thin to me. Will wait till the weighin next week.

thanks for the assurance fishie. I am not at all confidant of my abilities with this breastfeeding lark, half the time I feel like I am starving my child rather than nourishing her, doesn't help that she crys alot so I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong.

xx

[fishie]

laksa it really does sound as though things are fine. if you are still worried then perhaps take yourselves to bed for a day, just lie around with your baby and feed, sleep, relax.

[LittleMissMac]

Hello
First post here (and boy have I learnt a lot from obsessive lurking - hello everyone )

One of the very first things I picked up was advice on single-sided feeding. My DS (now 16 weeks but only a few weeks old at the time) was a real snacker and started having watery green poos. This was at a time when I was still getting really engorged boobs and thought I had a bit of an oversupply problem.

Feeding him from the same side over a four hour period (ie only switching sides every four hours, no matter how often he fed) sorted out the poo problem, which I believe is caused by too much fore milk. This technique also helped to settle down my excitable boobs, though that took a little longer.

I'm by no means an expert, and there's more [i]science[/i] to it than my weak explanation, but maybe worth a try? I believe it was Tiktok's excellent advice that I found initially by searching the forum, if you want to have a look for it.

BTW, DS was almost 3 weeks overdue and dropped from the 98th centile right through the charts over the course of 8 weeks. I haven't had him weighed for weeks and weeks and am much more relaxed about things, because I can see that he's happy, alert and active, and growing into his clothes.

Best of luck with it. I'm sure you're doing just fine.

[laksa]

thanks for the advice missmac (am honoured that you choose to post firt on my thread .
Momma, I do feed my lo quite often, anywhere between two to 31/2 hours. During the daytime it is probably every 2 hours or 2/12 (if she is screaming I sometimes pop her on after 1 1/2 hour) I will try keeping to one side for 4 hours. The only thing I worry about is that I don't have an oversupply issue as when I get a letdown and pump I only get about 3oz if I had an oversupply issue then surely I would be pumping off loads more?? I do still get engorged if I go over the 3 1/2-4 hour mark though.

Will try out this technique and hopefully will see a return to chicken korma instead of seaweed soup!

note to self, relaaaxx

thanks again ladies x

[laksa]

starlight, thats a good question about the signals that she is hungry. Most of the time during the day I never know if she is hungry or not as she fights naps so half the time I am not sure if she is hungry or tired so I cover both bases. In the night she wakes for food and does the zombie thing of lunging for my breast with wide staring eyes and a big wide mouth which makes a gobbling sound when she attaches which is normally because she has had an unusually long break between feeds ie 4 hoursish.

She doesn't tend to root for food and I can't use cues like sucking on fingers/clothes etc as she does this all the time before feeding and after. Lately she has started gnawing on my hands if she get them in her mouth, not sucking but grinding her gums into them, I wonder if she is teething early?

[tiktok]

laksa, over-supply is not diagnosed with how much you can pump so the fact you get no more than a perfectly-respectable amount on expressing is not a sign of anything but your expressing technique/quality of pump.

The fist-gnawing you describe is something many babies do at about that age - it's developmentally appropriate and whether it has anything to do with teething or not is speculation. Babies who actually are teething do it too, anyway.

I think you prob do have a touch of over-supply, and littlemismac's description of what to try is spot-on.

[tiktok]

Sorry - ignore my last post about over-supply! I was getting you mixed up with someone else.

I don't think you have over supply.

I think your feeding, and your baby, are both normal.

The paed has confirmed your baby is just fine.

I don't think there is a problem

[laksa]

thanks tiktok! So many threads, so little time?