To want to speak up about my niece...

[deliakate]

my brother and sil have just had a baby, she is two months younger than my DS. And I just know this baby has been hungry since birth.

She was born quite big, lost a lot to begin with, and now at 4 months she has only put on around 3lb in weight in her life. SIL has been insisting on exclusively breastfeeding her. She was feeding her just one breast in the morning and expressing off a load of milk to use later for the evening feed (presumably, because she didn't have enough milk at that time, I don't know). So the baby was crying ALL day long, and I mean all day.

Its so obvious its hunger. I spoke to my brother at xmas and mentioned that the expressing thing seems to be taking milk away from baby at the time when its being produced (ie when she needs it, as with demand feeding), and perhaps they should stop. I think they have now stopped it, and are doing the evening feed with formula.

Its very awkward, as sil is very sensitive. And she has made comments to me before about not wanting to overfeed the baby - eg when I babysat for her, I gave her two pots of expressed milk. The baby stopped crying and went to SLEEP. And she went mad, saying I'd doped her up on milk, and she was too young to have that much etc etc. My thoughts are that you cannot over feed a breastfed baby, and certainly for a newborn, the whole idea is to feed them up until they sleep. They should feed or sleep for much of the time until 3 months or so, not CRY all day!

I think they are sorting it now - but what would you do? Would you have said more before now? Would you approach sil directly??

Is she only breastfeeding morning and night?

How can she have kept up BF so long when not doing it frequently enough?

I assume the SIL has contact with health visitors etc - surely they would have said something?

To be honest, you should leave well alone unless it is obvious that the baby isn't thriving. Apart from the crying and low weight gain, how does the baby look?

comments about being doped up on milk do sound rather worrying imo.

Does the SIL have any issues of her own re food? I think the 'doping' comment is worrying too.

she might have been told to only feed four hourly or all sorts of nonesense. don't judge too harshly yet, but you know how much misinformation there is about breastfeeding and infant feeding generally

is she maybe worrying about feeding her baby to sleep? some people think that's a bad habit not to be encouraged.

She is breastfeeding a lot throughout the day. I'd say its oftener than every 4 hours. They are doing demand feeding, but apparently, baby never pulls herself off, she is just happy to lie there for ever. Each time I have seen them feeding, baby isn't exactly going for it, she is very still, not guzzling it down.
Idk whether sil has eating issues. She was very very thin before getting pregnant, but post partum, she seems to be eating well, and is heavier (it suits her).
There are some issues with her mental health I believe, and her sibling has a personality disorder. Idk if its linked, but I'm sure that's the reason she is so shirty when people try to give her advice.

i am not sure i understand, she is breastfeeding frequently in the day, but the baby is crying from hunger?

This sounds as thought there is more to it tbh.

WTF does her sibling's mental health have to do with anything? Why do you 'believe' SIL has mental health issues?

You say she is 'insisting on' exclusive BF. Well, that's no bad thing and you should support that not give dodgy advice (ie on expressing - what you say is incorrect - it does not 'take milk away from the baby') that will undermine their confidence. If you really think there is a problem then why not suggest they go to a local BF drop in, or tell SIL what a help MN can be, esp. the BF board?

There's no way to know if BF is going well or not based on what you have posted. SIL is demand feeding frequently, baby is putting on weight albeit slightly slowly. That doesn't sound too bad - I assume they see a HV and that there are no medical concerns about the baby.

Sounds fine to me.3lbs in 4 months is better weight gain than some of my DC
If she is expressing milk off for storage that will stimulate her body to make even more milk surely and in any case the baby is getting it in the evening ?It is better to feed along time from one boob as that means the baby gets plenty of hind milk ? She is feeding the baby on demand regularly and the more the baby suckles the more the milk production.
The baby cries a lot , but so what some babies do

I don't think OP is very confident that BF works, or that she knows much about how ot works.

I have to say, I can just imagine how her SIL's post on the same subject would read... 'AIBU to want my SIL to stop telling me I am starving my baby by BF'.

OP, maybe there is a problem, maybe it is normal. Your SIL and her partner, together with the HCPs involved, are the best judge of that. Not you, and not a load of strangers on MN based on a contradictory half-story.

My own daughter only used to put on a couple of ounces per week and is still a scrawny little thing at three and a half years although no one who meets her (including paeds consultants) has ever been in any doubt about her health and energy levels.

Your SIL sounds like she is doing exactly the right thing by exclusively breastfeeding on demand. It sounds like the baby might also be doing some comfort sucking, but if sil is happy with that then it's not a problem. Her body will be very used to making enough milk for both the baby's needs and the daily express so there is no reason to worry about her supply. The most reliable indicator that a baby is getting enough milk is that there are at least 5 wet nappies a day. Do you have an idea about that?

The feeding to sleep thing is something a lot of people would not agree with. some babies have an eat-sleep-'play' schedule, some prefer eat-play-sleep. Neither is superior to the other.

Oh and I have no mental health issues at all but I would still get shirty when other people questioned my parenting. Most people do.

If she is demand feeding throughout the day, I suggest you stop telling her that the baby isn' feeding enough. That would annoy me, too, if I was exclusively bf.

Though I agree that the comment about giving her two bottles of ebm was odd.

How is her weight on her growth charts?

If she is feeding on demand I dont see what else she can do?. perhaps the baby has reflux (they dont HAVE to throw up for this they csan just get discomfort). My son had this and spent the first 6 months of his life crying and being miserable, he ate often and was formula fed so hunger had nothing to do with it.

agree with the others - your op made it sound as if she was ONLY feeding morning and night. Demand feeding sounds ideal to me. Expressing in the morning won't affect the baby.

doped up still very very odd sounding though.

There's no way for us to know whether OP is right and the baby is really hungry.

There's no way of telling whether SIL's bf'ing is going ok from the info she provided.

BUT there IS an issue because:
SIL makes very very strange statements (don't want to overfeed the baby, what is that all about???...)
SIL gets angry when OP gives two pots of milk to the baby. This is absolutely out of order - baby is happy and sleeping but SIL is angry - why???...
Other SIL's comments are a bit surreal as well - that OP doped the baby on milk ( ???!!) and that the baby is too little to have THAT much.

I would understand SIL's anger if e.g. OP was pushing solids down the baby's throat. But it's breastmilk!

SIL seems to have control issues - she wants to control every drop of milk that goes into her baby and wants to ration it. Why? She puts baby's nutrition and growth in jeopardy - for the sake of keeping the baby 'slim'?
There's definitely something going on - I have a strong suspition that SIL has possibly had an eating disorder before her pregnancy and is obviously still very much in the grip of it. OP would not necessarily know about it, SIL's DH might be oblivious to the fact as well. The control and such unhealthy preoccupation with food (baby's and very likely with her own too) are strong indicators of eating issues to me.

It's a difficult situation. If she actually has eating disorder then approaching her directly will do nothing good, OP might even become her enemy Nr1.

Is there any way you could speak to the health visitor and describe the situation and your concerns? Gaining 3lb in 4 months seems little to me. HV could casually ring her up and offer a home visit and maybe talk about baby's nutrition if there's really a problem with his weigth.

I am ebf my own son, Queen, and I do understand quite a lot of the principles involved. I wish I could save the baby from crying so much, that is all, and I think that hunger MAY be the issue.
I know that she has had mental health issues because she told me, and when one sibling has a personality disorder, which she also told me about, it often affects (albeit more mildly) the others.
I have not at all mentioned anything to my sil about this by the way, just tried to quietly speak to my brother to try to help him see that a baby doesn't have to cry all day, and there may be something wrong if she is not gaining much AND is crying all day long.
In fact, I've never given her advice, because I know she hates it from other people. I was just wondering what you guys would do - would you speak to her or not. It seems mostly not.

I'm not sure how feeding on demand can be seen as rationing.

It's impossible to really know the situation her. I have friend who was in hormonal floods last week when half an hour after she had bf her baby her mil had given the baby the expressed milk that friend had earmarked for the night feed. As far as she was concerned it was half an hours hard work expressing completely wasted, and a long looked forward to night's sleep completely buggered.

I think she was completely within her rights to be angry about that and maybe it was a similar situation here.

Hmm, possibly. She didn't communicate that though. She just said she didn't like that the baby was asleep because she was 'over full' of milk. Plus she hadn't stipulated how much milk the baby was to have, so I wasn't disobeying her instructions at all, I just fed the baby until it didn't seem to want any more.

The way you described your sil and her baby - you could have been describing me with ds1.
He cried and cried, unless I fed him. He rarely slept.

So many people had advice - give him a dummy, feed him formula etc. He put on weight very slowly, where my dsis's dd put on nearly a pound a week.

The first few weeks of his life were some of the worst in my life, and were certainly not helped by these "helpful" people.

Their HCP will be monitoring how the baby is doing, I think you should leave the advice to them.

If the baby cries a lot, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is hungry, it could just be a very vocal baby.

yeah my breastfed baby cried all the time too.

might be any number of things totally unrelated to feeding

Well maybe I've been misled by my HVs. They were going on about centiles and saying if a baby dropped way below their birth centile and didn't go back up, it was cause for concern.

yes you've been misled.