Is this normal? Almost at the end of my tether

[AprilAl]

After a slow start and much perseverence (slight tongue tie and subsequent inefficient feeding leading to supply issues), 6 week old DS is now exclusively breastfed (woohoo! ). It's only in the last few days that we've dropped the last of the formula top-ups he was still having.

Problem is that his 6 week growth spurt has coincided with the current heatwave. He's not coping well with the heat and is feeding pretty much constantly. He feeds for about 10-20mins, falls asleep at the breast, snoozes for about 10 minutes and then wakes up and screams until I stick a boob in his face again. Since 2am this morning there has been a total of four hours where he has not been following this pattern (2 hours of DH taking him away and distracting him so I could get some sleep and two 1 hour naps). This has been going on for four days now and although it's done wonders for my supply, I am sore and exhausted.

He seems to be getting plenty of milk, he's producing a good number of wet and dirty nappies - his poos being almost entirely liquid and his urine being nice and clear - so he's certainly not dehydrated. I'm slightly concerned that although he has definitely grown length wise, he's only put on a very small amount of weight in the last 5 days, but HV was not concerned as all other indicators suggest he is getting plenty.

Is this normal? How long will it last? Is there anything I can do to improve the quality of his feeding so it doesn't need to be so constant?

Well done on getting back to full time breastfeeding.

Sounds like his behaviour is just normal for the growth spurt and needing an extra drink in this hot weather. But, you say you are sore? However much he is feeding, it shouldn't be sore, so you might need to tweak the latch a bit to get things more comfortable.

Is there a reason why you have got him weighed after only 5 days since the last weigh in?

I thought it would be a good idea to get him weighed as a benchmark now that I've cut out the formula altogether, so I can check in a couple of weeks that his weight gain is still ok. Was surprised at how little he'd put on, but HV was reassuring.

She did also wave off my concerns about feeding still being painful though. Said that was likely just because it was so frequent at the moment. I wasn't really happy with that conclusion though and have been wondering if the TT is still causing issues, despite the latch looking good. I decided to give it another week, carry on working on the latch and see if things improve. If not I'll ask to have his tongue looked at again.

Ok I see why you'd want to check that, it's just that when you weigh so frequently you don't really see the overall picture, just a short term fluctuation. I'm assuming he's back to birth weight, so if that's the case, weighing every four weeks is really all that's needed.

I wouldn't put up with being fobbed off about that pain tbh, if it's a good latch, it should be comfortable no matter how often Lo is feeding. Good idea to follow that up I reckon.