is this me not having enough milk?

[reastie]

we are having issues with settling my 3.5 mo dd in evenings which I'm wondering is (partly) due to if I have enough milk.

We had bf with one formula feed in the night until a couple of weeks ago when dd started sleeping through the night, since then, she's been a nightmare to get to bed and I often feel like she wants more milk than I have in evenings (effectively we have dropped the ff as she's sleeping through so I have to provide milk during the day/evening to compensate for it).

I cluster feed in the evening and we give a ff top up of a couple of fl oz or so at about 7 to try and help her. Last night, I did things differently as we tried no ff top up and saw how she went - she woke up screaming and only feeding would stop her. She fed from me both sides until it hurt and she kept trying to feed but coming off the boob and crying in a frustrated way so I gave her a bigger ff top up of about 80 - 100ml. After that - she was chirpy and happy like i've never seen her at that time of day - she even went in her cot looking happy and talking (as opposed to the usual screams straight away).

Have I just not got enough supply in the evenings? Can I up it or is this common? I'm wondering if I should regularly d a bigger top up at the 7pm feed now to catch the hunger before she gets really upset all evening as maybe this is the cause . Ohhh. so many questions, sorry, but you are all so knowledgable and helpful

yeah gourd there was a stage when dd was first born when I could only feed with nipple shields for a few weeks due to damaged nipples so we have quite a few kicking around somewhere . If things get bad I'll do that but I'm hoping they'll recover in a few days. I actually had to do that express one side/feed from the other for a couple of day quite early on on mws advice from really bad blister/bleeding on one side

reastie, as you've seen from the other posters, this is really common. DD was toxic every evening from 5pm to midnight from about 2-5 months. She turned down ebf in a bottle so I used to either put her in a sling, take her out in the pram or just swop from boob to boob until she fell asleep.

I suppose my point is, this is normal, it will go away and you shouldn't think it's your supply that's the problem. Kellymom has lots of advice on phasing out top ups if that's what you want to do.

what everyone else said

if you are sore don't feed her all the time. like with expressing, you don't need to sit with the pump/baby on your boob for 24 hours getting sore, particularly if it gets worse the more she feeds from you. little and often can be just as effective, particularly if your dd can drain the breast quite efficiently by now.

when my DS was a few weeks old I also had an open wound on my nipple and i remember him going mental and i phoned my sister and i was like 'i cannot feed him, it hurts too much!' and she suggested a dummy just till he calmed down (i'm not suggesting this btw its just what happened on that day) and then i bit the bullet and fed him, again and he went to sleep. i too had to express off one for a week or so while it healed over. hideous.

anyway, if you can bear a night feed between 12 and 4am say, that would help. sometimes women find their letdown happens if they take ten deep breaths near the beginning of the feed. like someone else said, its not the milk you can feel that is in your boobs, there is loads deep inside in the little round cells called alveoli i think...

you could have a plan for phasing out the formula and stick to it. like someone said, try a sling or singing, or something other than top ups if you can't face feeding her (if that is what you want...)

and kellymom is right - boobs don't stay rock hard and engorged forever. they get softer and softer for some and it seems like you have nothing but then the let down happens as the baby feeds and bosch! - milk floweth ha!

get real life support from other mums if you can - can be really really helpful.