has all my milk gone and can I get it back?

[Cappucino]

dd is 16ms now and keeps shoving my breasts away because they are empty. they don't fill up at any time, even on the occasions when dh takes her downstairs for some milk in the morning to give me some extra sleep - they are a lot soft and pitiful

I want to keep feeding her morning and bedtime but i think she's getting a bit peed off. she's got eczema so I really do want to persevere with this cos I think it's the best thing

can your breast milk dry up before they've finished with it? and is there anything you can do about it?

Cappucino - you won't feel full at this stage - I stop getting that 'full' feeling after about 6 months of feeding with my dd1, and after only 4 months with dd2. Your body gets very efficient at just producing milk as and when it's needed.

So first question - are you absolutely sure there's no milk? Does your dd feed at all, or immediately reject the breast? My second dd is 14 months and breastfed 2-3 times per day and she feeds very fast, less than 5 minutes and she's done.

Does she get milk via any other method e.g. bottle or cup? It may be that the breastfeeding is harder work and she just doesn't want to any more. Also at this age they are very easily distracted - I have to feed my dd in a quiet room, often with the lights dimmed.

As usual the one sure way to up your milk supply is to feed more often. And rest assured if you've successfully breastfed for this length of time your supply doesn't suddenly dry up or vanish completely.

with one breast it's immediate rejection. and when I expressed I got very little from it either

I've tried feeding her more but she just faffs about

Hmmm - not sure what to suggest. Both my dds have gone through phases of being not very interested in feeding, and fussing about a lot, but in both cases it was at around the 8-10 month mark, and after a month or so they settled back to feeding quite well.

One thing I would say is that expressing isn't a good indicator of how much milk is there. I used to be able to express loads 6-8oz when my dd was 6 months, but now I can't even get an ounce out no matter how hard I try. But I know she's still getting the milk out somehow. I think it just gets harder and harder to trigger the let down with a pump when you're not breastfeeding so regularly. At any rate, I've now given up pumping at work and that's why my dd2 gets cows milk on those days.

I guess I would say if you want to carry on feeding, just keep offering the breast (maybe do the one she likes first, and then try the other!) and eventually your dd may well settle back down. And don't worry about how much milk she's getting at this age, she's eating solid foods and milk is just a bonus, she'll get what she needs from relatively little. I used to fret all the time about those books saying they need a pint a day or whatever, trying to work out if I could possibly be producing that much and concluding that I couldn't!

Good luck.

thanks very much for your advice, I do feel reassured, thank you