16 week old breastfeeding behaviour

[Bobbeldibop]

Hi all,

FTM and first time poster (long time lurker).

My 16 week old DS is EBF and has recently taken to arching his back and throwing back his head seconds into breastfeeding. He'll do some suckling, do his back arch head throw routine and won't latch on again until I switch breast. There he will hungrily seek out the nipple only to do his spiel again. So I have to switch breast again. This can take up to an hour and more (he does tend to get overtired very quickly and I'm still working on identifying the earliest tiredness cues). So I'm pretty frustrated having to hoist him up a million times until he seemingly has tired himself out to just stick to one breast and fall asleep there. Also he for whatever reason tends to prefer one side over the other so that the less favoured breast has now become engorged (I haven't had issues with engorgement for a long time so also frustrated at that).

Have any of you mumsnetters come across this behaviour at all? Do you think it's simply being overtired orbi is there something wrong with my breast/nipples/am I missing something?

Thanks!

Hey, I think 4 months is a really tricky age because they’re just so bloody distracted by everything. You should google 4 month breastfeeding there’s loads about it! During the day my 5 month old son will be on the boob for 30 seconds and pull off. Now the only way to get a decent feed from him is when I know it’s nearing time for him to nap and I just sit on the rocking chair with him and he does a long feed/sleep.

I also found that just because you put them on your boob and they start sucking straight away and then stop/fuss/cry it doesn’t mean that they were hungry - it’s more like a reflex... like if I put him up to my boob he just will root for it and put it in his mouth and then after a couple sucks he realises what’s going on and that actually that’s not what he wants and pulls off. I used to get so worried and confused because to me it seemed that he wanted the boob but then after a few seconds would cry/push off etc. Now during the day I offer him the boob and if he’s fussing more than once I just leave it for about.

Because he doesn’t feed so much during the day he makes up for it at night unfortunately!

I hope some of that helps!xx

Thanks that makes so much sense. It's just like you're describing. It hadn't even occurred to me that he wouldn't be hungry because up until recently he was hungry ALL of the time...

I'll certainly try your approach and stop force feeding him ! X

4 month fussies. It'll pass.

Thanks Cornetttttto, hopefully soon...

It will.