Do I have an oversupply problem?

[muffins]

DD is 4 weeks old. Since milk came in I noticed I seem to have a strong letdown. Feels very strong/painful at beginning of feed and DD will often fuss and come off breast which then squirts milk everywhere. I always leak onto breastpads. Sometimes DD comes off later in feed and there is more squirtyness. Right breast worse but left one squirts too.
I am mainly wondering as DD has been a little unsettled recently and all poopy nappies have green tinge, not yellow as they werepreviously.
DD usually has both breasts in a feed and I start next feed on breast I finished last feed on. After Reading some stuff this morning should I only offer one breast per feed? I never take her off first breast but just put her on the second one when she asks for more. It's so blooming confusing, help!

It depends, really.

It certainly sounds like you have a strong letdown. There are a few things you can do to help your DD with this, see here.

How is your DD's weight gain?

Are your breasts soft at the end of a feed? Are they ever engorged and painful between/before feeds?

Not been weighed since last week but had put on nearly a pound in a week, puts her on 75th centile I think. Weighed again next week.

My breasts do start to feel firm when nearing a feed, quite uncomfortable if she has gone any longer than 3 hours. They do usually feel soft after a feed. Fed her at 7.15 this morning and she has only had right breast. Left one is now feeling almost lumpy.
Will go look at that link thankyou

Ok, so you may have oversupply as well, but maybe not too bad, given that your breasts generally feel soft after a feed.

As long as her weight gain is good, offering one breast per feed won't do any harm, and should slow down your supply a bit.

Just read link, as well as the pulling away bit she also does a lot of clicking noises earlier on in the feed too

Oh and lots of gulping as gasping too!

switching to one breast per feed for a while and the reverse pressure softening for the strong letdown should help. it is also quite common in the initial weeks as the body goes a bit overboard to produce milk for your baby - which is a good thing. the leaking at night etc is likely going to stop around 8-12 weeks but switching to only one breast per feed for a while will help your body adjust quicker. i used to just put dd back on the same breast for a while so that she would get more hindmilk.

In my humble opinion this sounds like oversupply - I had it, and a strong let down, and has only sorted itself out in last two weeks (little one now 8 weeks). The clicking I think may be her breakig the seal to cope with fast flow. My feeds were v quick (sometimes only 5 mins) and I could only get him to take one side. He would also fuss a lot which was really distressing. Also had the squirtiness! His weight gain was tracking his birth centile.

I basically gave him one side (mostly not by choice as was all he would have!) and now oversuppply seems to have fixed itself mostly. Let down still fast and he sometimes comes off few times in the first mins and milk gets over his little face (not as bad as it was though!). I sort of had to just ride it out and hold my nerve - was so scared he wasn't getting enough in the short feeds, but it seems he has been (though due to be weighed tomorrow so will see).

Hope you are feeling ok, I know how hard it is!

I had the same problem, it takes a few weeks for your body to get used to the supply/demand, but eventually it does happen. Poor DD would cough and choke as I was basically flooding her little mouth with far more than she could handle. My HV advised me to get a hand pump and express a bit before DD latched on; I found even just a few pumps helped a lot as the milk didn't come out with quite as much force.

I could hold a spare bottle over the non-feeding side and catch 4oz while DD happily fed from the other... and that WASN'T expressing; it would just flow out as soon as DD latched on. I felt like a prize milk cow at times!

By the time she was 6-8 weeks old, everything had settled down nicely.