One side flow is greater, causes problems

[Candleatmidnight]

2nd baby, one week old. This also happened with first and I BF for a year but tried hard this time not to make the same happen again but it's happening.

The flow in my right breast is just much greater than my left, so baby gets bored on left/falls asleep/waits for the grand finale which is the offering of the right breast where he gets his proper feed fast.

Left breast does not have less supply, it just comes out slower, so once I've offered the right it just leaks slowly while I feed on the right and eventually used supply because baby does not feed on it as much.

Last time I tried giving the left, moving to right and pumping the left as baby was feeding on the right. This was a whole theatrical performance of sterilising the pump and the bottle, getting in the right position, balancing the baby on pillow while i navigated pump around left breast and operated the buttons. Then couldn't adjust breast in pump as other arm was holding baby. Up to 15 times over day and night. So much for the "ease" of BF-ing!

Any alternative solutions?

[tiktok]

What a palaver :)

How about doing nothing about this? Most women's breasts perform unequally. It's just the way it is. One option at least for the moment is just to wait and see if in a week or so the difference becomes less obvious as your supply settles.

All the faff with the pump doesn't sound at all easy.

[iMatter]

I had this with my 2 dc.

I decided I was right breasted and my flow soon adjusted itself. Left boob became top up boob or boob for expressing.

[LabRats]

I also had one underperforming boob. It's totally normal.

Much like imatter, I fed mainly from the right and used left as a top up or at night time. My right boob was significantly larger as a result. This caused no problems and I fed DD for six months.

Don't stress, just go with the flow (see what I did there ).

[dollydaydream84]

Rather than the balancing act with the pumps, get an old bra cut a hole in it, push funnel through (if it's separate to pump) and attach pump and bottle. It makes you look like a dairy cow but has made feed/expressing balancing act a thing of the past and double pumping hands free=amazing!

[DouglasFirs]

I had this so switched to always starting a feed on the 'slower' boob, seemed to even things up in about a week! I think their suck is stronger at the start of a feed so prob makes sense to start with the slow boob and move on to the one with more milk/flow