does oversupply ever calm down?

[fallingandlaughing]

DD is 14 weeks. I had to give her expressed milk for her first week of life due to birth injuries, but we managed to re-establish breastfeeding by about 10 days old.

I have always had oversupply and a forceful let-down, but thought it might have eased off by now. It hasn't, and really takes the joy out of feeding at times. DD usually sleeps from midnight til between 8 and 10 and then the feeds up to early afternoon are a struggle, with her coughing and crying, milk spattering the furniture, we both end up a sticky mess. My right breast is particularly "abundant", sometimes multiple jets of milk will go several feet and it takes minutes to calm down. Usually I let it pour into a glass or cloth as DD cries, it seems to ease off, she latches on and it often starts up again so we repeat this faffing around. the right breast can be a problem throughout the day, and sometimes she cries even as I bring her to it.

Is there anything I can do?

There are things you can do to help, different nursing positions and if your having a lot of problems then block nurseing can help to.

I take it she's gained weight with no issues? If so then you could try block nursing.

There are more details hear www.kellymom.com/bf/supply/fast-letdown.html but effectively block nursing is when you feed baby from one breast for say 2 hours then switch to the seconed one for the next two hours. you can increase the length of time on each side to see if this helps with the supply issue. Have a good read first, it may be a good idea to talke this through with a BF counciler first just to make sure you don't end up causeing any other issues and block nursing will reduce supply.

Give one of the helplines a ring
National Breastfeeding Helpline
0300 100 0212

The Breastfeeding Network Supporterline
0300 100 0210

NCT Breastfeeding Helpline
0300 330 0771

La Leche League Helpline
0845 120 2918

Association of Breastfeeding Mothers
08444 122 949

Thanks I will maybe give one of the helplines a try.

I already do a kind of block nursing, making sure DD has emptied one breast before she has the other. So sometimes she will empty on one feed, sometimes I will present the same breast two or three times over a period of 2 - 4 hours. I'll have a look ay Kellymom and think about doing it more formally.

DD seems to be long and skinny (like me) but her weight gain is tracking at about the 25th percentile and HV has no worries.

I suffered dreadfully from oversupply and forceful letdown with DD1 until I learnt to manage it. With DD2 it has been less of an issue, I think because I have managed the situation better from the start.

What worked for me:

• feeding while leaning back against cushions
• only offering one breast at each feed
• spacing out the feeds (three hourly for both of my two, unless they were obviously hungry and distraction didn't work)
• only expressing unless absolutely necessary

What didn't work:

• talking to my health visitor and local breast feeding counsellor (neither had any idea this could be a problem)
• LLL helpline (lots of waffle about how it must be great to to have so much milk, not helpful at all)

Hope that helps.

I've also had oversupply problems, lots of milk squirting everywhere and painful breasts with lumps most days. Block nursing has definietly helped and like the poster above said avoid expressing, I had to quickly express some milk last week and used both breasts and really suffered for a couple of days so avoid that as much as possible.

Also again I agree with ilovemountains, my local bf counsellor couldn't really understand why this was a problem even though I had made it clear how uncomfortable it was....

Block nursing worked for me too. Only one boob per feed and switch sides every other feed (so same boob two feeds in a row). I had to be careful with expressing as it put me out of kilter!

Mine was really forceful for the first 4 months. Poor DD would splutter through every feed. Now at 5 months it's better. She still chokes every now and then but nowhere near as much. And I finally stopped with the pads. Not changed anything though, it just improved. Hth.