Feeding or comfort sucking?

[kayjaybabe]

is their anyway of telling the difference between feeding and comfort sucking? My DD will do some feeds in 20 mins and some in a hour, how can i tell when the feeds turned into comfort?

No sucking at the breast is unproductive, lenght of feeds can varry from day to day or durning the day.

How old is she? It's best not to limit feeds as this can impact your milk supply.

She is only 6 weeks and is currently at the end of her week 6 growing spurt. I dont mind her comfort sucking except at night she will sleep from 7/8 pm till 10pm ill feed her and she wont sleep and constintly sucks at her hand, ill offer her more breast and she wont stop feeding/sucking till at least 2pm.

ive tried many ways to try and get her to sleep inbetween 10 and 2 but nothing seems to work. i no its conpletely normal but i am wanting to try and change night comfort sucking into day comfort sucking as i doubt she is actually feeding that whole time without getting sufficiantly full.

I also understand routines this early are just a waste of time when fully bfing, although i can only hope

You say she doesnt sleep and sucks her hand, but is she screaming/crying or just hand sucking? My DS sucked his hand and has now found his fingers and thumb.

If she isnt screaming can you try just putting her down in her bed, very low light or no light at all and leave her to it until she drops off to sleep. She will eventually learn that this is night time.

Once she's a bit older you could try a dummy . I have just done this with my DS who is 14 weeks old as he is using me to comfort suck himself to sleep. So now I feed him, put him in his cot and if he's unsettled I will try a dummy for 5 mins or so until he's settled and then as soon as he's asleep I take it out. I'm only doing this as a last resort thing when all other ways to settle him have been tried and my nipples are feeling like they are about to drop off.

However, your DD is still very young and you may find in a week or two she stops doing it anyway.

She makes her silly little noises and doesnt scream/cry until i put her in her cot then she crys until i give in and pick her back up. Ive tried a dummy (although was secretly praying she would spit it out) she hated it but i guess she is young so a dummy is very confusing for her.

She has discovered her thumb but rathers her full fist or my face . I hope she does get out of this habit as last night she stayed up for 5 hours straight slept for 3 hours and now been up for a hour and not even remotely tierd. I dont think its healthy her being awake for such a long period of time.

I really dont know what to suggest kayjay, but I can tell you it does get better as they get older and they start sleeping longer.

Hopefully someone else may have some suggestions.

Is she dossing while she is sucking though? As if she is then she is getting some rest even if she's not sound asleep.

She's still so little at six week's and doesn't even know she's a seperate person yet . Have you considered co-sleeping and learning to feed lying down, as this will help you get more rest untill she starts settaling better.

She seems to get frustrated, ill feed her she will rest for 5 minutes then want more i then feed again she drinks a bit then detaches reataches over and over again.

While attached she will grunt, scratch me, breath ultra heavy, squeek, do muffled screams and just become overly restless. This only happens after she has finished feeding and when im guessing its just the comfort sucking, while she feeds she lays still, quiet eyes closed.

She will also strech while attached causing her to almost rip my nipple off, ive started to get blood blisters. The thing that worrys me is how frustrated she gets its as though its painfull but she is the one attaching and detaching constintly.

Ive tried lying down, we established that position quite early and yes i love it but she still does the same thing and whenever we are in that position i have to cuddle her after each feed as she crys when she finishes...

I know this phase wil pass but in the mean time its tiering. For the last 4 nights she has slept 7 till 10pm then awake 10pm till 3am then sleep untill 6am then for the rest of the morning she will just feed and sleep (deep coma sleep). She is only 6 weeks old and she went 9 hours without sleeping! Im worried for her health.

Have you tired taking her off and offering her the other side when she gets fussy?

Have a read hear to see if any off this fits www.kellymom.com/bf/concerns/baby/fussy-while-nursing.html

I wouldn't worry about the amount of sleep to be hoinst if she seems well in herself. DD never needed as much sleep as the book said and would go long streaches awake even at this young age (we never got a sleepy newborn phase with her) She's now a healthy 4year old.

I have started to get that fidgetty thing with dd (7weeks) - i think it's because she's drained the breast and is annoyed because she can't get any more. - reason is because i've been swapping boobs when she does it and she sucks and settles straight away.
try it. :)

Even when i do swap boobs she is still fidgety, ill read up onit now migril.

Well i gave her a huge feed i was basically force feeding her, then we jumped in the car and went for circles arpund the block and finally she is asleep in her bassenette its 5:15am here and she has been awake since around 9-10 pm... Well im going to pass out into a mini coma until boss wants her breakfast haha!

Ps. Read the link and im pretty sure its a bit of almost everything, growing spurt, fast milk flow and slow milk flow (just at seperate times in feeding), developmental stages ie; getting distracted by little things and her thrush may be starting to come back. I will just have to wait and see if it passes soon

If you have a smart phone there is an app called white noise lite. We use the rain sound at night which sends him from a screaming wreck to kicking relatively happy. He is also very much a boob boy, he will take a bottle but will happily suck away on me forever given half a chance. In fact he will neck a bottle (which I give him at night t 6.30) and then scrabbled for boobage to comfort him to sleep. Strangely the app doesn't work in the daytime, but works a treat at night, I have occasionally used it in the middle of the night when he is clearly looking for comfort and I just can't do any more boob (ahhhhh, stop taking the piss and go back to sleep etc.....)

I've just been on the Kelly mom link, she suggests that it takes two hours to digest breast milk. My hv told me that my bambino shouldnt really need to feed more often than every three hours which I work hard to try to achieve. Am I wasting my time? Does that account for why he is waking up every two hours at night.

Ill get that app and try it tonight maybe ill get more then 3 hours sleep!

Gosh so if it takes 2 hours to digest what about when they feed every hour their disgestion would be going crazy and she would get so over full!! No wounder she chucks up everynow and then after a big sleep.

probably.
DD does a mini-puke after she's been cluster-feeding and if she's been doing a really long feed.

Happyrf - It really is pointless trying to get a hungery baby to go longer between feeds then they want. Some will happly do 3 hours but 2hours is quit normal as well. I also read somewhere else that the transit time of milk through the gut is actualy 90minutes so yes absolutly possible to be hungary after 2 hours. Try feeding more in the day to see if that hepls him go longer at night.

I fed her almost every hour during the day she slept on and off but only a total of 4 hours all day i decided to keep her awake till 10/11pm ish and then bath snd bed hoping that would help her sleep longer, she slept for half an hour and woke screaming wouldnt stop screaming for 15 minutes.

An hour later, she is now fast asleep on my chest and crys if i try to put her down, looks like she is sleeping with me tonight!

Thanks mig gril, that makes sense, its just that ds1 was happy with 3 hours but he was huge. Ds2 is tiny so I guess needs lots, I would rather leave it and get him to eat loads than drip feed but I reckon I can do that with two hour feeds