on/off feeding misery

[ExistentialistCat]

Please help!

18 week-old DD2 has always had occasional feeds where she sucks frantically for a few seconds, pulls off, cries, searches for the nipple again, and so on. Changing position and/or breast, cupping my breast with one hand or winding all help a little bit, but not much. Over the last two days ALL the daytime feeds have been like this. She sucks like mad for 5 minutes maximum (and is generally extremely impatient for my letdown to start) and then just fusses and cries. I've been feeding at least every hour but there's been no 'proper' extended feed.

At night she's a different baby. 10-15 minutes on each breast and goes down just fine (although I'm bound to have jinxed that now).

What is going on?! Growth spurt? Latch or position problem? Or is it (guilt) the nightly bottle of formula that I introduced a fortnight ago, so that she now expects that at every feed?

I'd really appreciate any thoughts. It's getting me down enough that I'm considering phasing out bfing altogether or weaning early, neither of which I really want to do but I'm at my wits' end.

What kind of bottle/teats are you using? It could be that the ease of bottle feeding has made her a bit impatient at working at the breast. This happened to a friend of mine recently, though I think her baby might have been having 2 bottles a day - her baby preferred the bottle as it was easier.

Kellymom has lots of suggestions as to what it might be & how to help.

Could be a growth spurt - there's often one around 4 months. Often they have a real stage of distractibility around that age too.

Could be a bottle issue, I suppose. I think using the slowest possible newborn teat is likely to help minimise that problem.

Thanks MoonUnitAlpha and AngelDog. I'm using the slow newborn teats. I didn't think just one bottle in the evening could make that big a difference, and it doesn't explain why DD feeds calmly and efficiently at night. She doesn't seem particularly distracted during the day (unlike DD1 at that age, who simply had more interesting things to do than eat!), just cross, somehow...

has she got a cold? i find that if my babys nose is a bit blocked he goes on and off like that, but sometimes at night is fine?

This happens to me too so am watching for any good ideas!

This sounds a variation of my problem and my baby is also around the same age. The book, the Wonder Weeks suggests feeding and appetite changes/fussiness due to massive brain/development changes at this particular age but I'm finding it very upsetting too and have posted a question about developmental leaps and appetite/feeding problems. I'm hoping that is all it is.

i'm not sure which one but there is a bottle teat which works so the baby has to do more of a breastfeeding action - will try and google

could be distraction - my DS started taking concentrated, focused feeds at night and snacked all day - couldn't sit still...

any way you can get rid of the formula? - not because it is a 'bad' thing but some women find it short circuits the supply and demand thing and leads to two bottles, three etc

http://www.breastflow.co.uk/qa.htm#q6

no experience with it myself - just heard it on the grapevine

The Medela Calma teat only lets milk through when they suck so might help with avoiding baby preferring a faster flow.

My baby's been doing this sometimes lately too - she's only 6 weeks - and I'm finding its often when there's people and noise around. Retreating to a quiet room helps us.

I use the breastflow bottles with the slowest teat, and haven't had a problem - definitely more work involved than tommee tippee style teats.

Please don't mind me commenting I had an awful, awful time with the Calma, I had to disuse it would somtimes stream milk out and baby would choke with it going down the wrong way , I had to complain, I got three new bottles out of it but wont risk it they are unopened (about £35 worth wasted) and went over to the TT Closer to Nature ones.

Thanks again, all. I still don't understand why DD2's night feeds go so smoothly if it's the evening bottle of formula that's the culprit. And she's had a tendency towards this sort of pattern all along, it's just got worse recently.

It's hard to know what to do. Stopping the bedtime ff or switching to a different bottle seem like good possibilities but if it's a growth spurt (and even if it's not), she'll be such a different baby in another 2 or 4 weeks anyway that it'll be impossible to know what's made the difference!

Hi ExistentialistCat, it might not be the formula - she just might be distracted during the day - its very common - particularly if she is a very alert baby. Why did you start with the formula? At bedtime is it? I don't know what the right answer is . I found 4-6 months with DS pretty challenging. He wanted to feed for 3 minutes every hour and a half and would then take 20 minute good feeds at night every 4/5 hours?! During growth spurts he fed every 1.5 hours round the clock aaahh. But this was just his way and I've stopped feeding him now and those days are gone and even though I was soooooo dog tired, I really miss them and I can never get them back. I will never feed him again lolol

This sounds very similar to my DS. He is 20 weeks and a very fussy feeder in the day. I often can't get him to feed for more than a few minutes, and he would happily go for hours without a feed. Night is a different story - he wakes and wants feeding about every 2 hours, and always has a good long feed. Has been like this since a growth spurt over Christmas. I have tried to get him to feed more in the day but he just cries. He wont take a bottle so it's not that, and I try to feed in a quiet room, but nothing seems to work. I am exhausted - has anyone else had this problem and found a solution?

Yes, sedgiebaby is right about the developmental stuff which can have an effect (there's a big spurt around 6 weeks too).

Does feeding when she's sleepy (going to sleep or waking from naps) help?

You're right about her being a different baby in a few weeks. :)

mapletrees, how does he nap? That could have an effect.

AngelDog he naps quite well. He usually self-settles, but will normally only sleep for 45mins unless he is out in the pram/car. He has a total of about 3 hours of daytime sleep most days, but the times do vary...