Milk flow is too fast- baby is spluttering and gagging

[juniper9]

Hello,

My DD is 9 days old and so she and I are still getting used to this whole feeding malarky.

Since my milk came in, it's been a bit excessive; leaking all over the place and generally being a bit of a pain. If I express it, I can easily get 60ml in 10 minutes from just one side. However many pads I put on, I still wake up with huge wet patches on my top and swollen boobs.

The problem is that DD is choking on my milk, and I think it's because it's flowing too fast. She gets really bad wind which makes her uncomfortable. I've tried sitting her more upright when I feed her, but it hasn't really made much difference. I read a suggestion of lying on my back with her facing down, but that nearly smothered her!

She is a hungry little thing and drinks a massive amount. This morning I fed her for nearly 2 hours straight, and she still wanted more. My DP gave her a bottle of expressed milk and she drank another 120ml! Then I fed her a bit more not long after.

She has only lost a tiny bit of her birth weight, which I'm really pleased about, but I'm not surprised as she just seems to eat and poo all day!

I know lots of people have problems with not producing enough milk and worrying that their babies are hungry, so this may seem like a non-problem, but it's making her unhappy as she's not enjoying the feeds where she chokes and glugs, and then ends up really windy.

Has anyone got any suggestions? I'm not seeing the midwife until Monday.

Rest assured this won't last for long. Your supply will reduce to match her demand soon. The flow will slow down and your DD will get better at controlling it with her sucking.

It's very early days and she's still learning.

Have you tried anything like Infacol to help her bring the wind up?

It sounds like you have a fast letdown. Have you tried expressing a bit off first then offering her the breast?

I used to have a towel next to me and when the let down began I'd unlatch dd and spray into the towel until it had calmed down.

Sympathies.. have been there and know this is very much a real difficulty, even though I felt awkward about it in the face of friends with supply problems etc.

I found expressing a bit by hand before feeding helped. DD was exclusively fed expressed milk for the first week or so because of birth injuries and I think expressing exacerbated the oversupply issue. If you want to continue giving her expressed milk I'd suggest popping a container under your unused boob while breastfeeding and you might find what leaks out is enough.

Also the suggestion above of having a towel to hand and letting her pull off and the milk firing flowing into the towel.

What helped most for me was block feeding. So instead of alternating between breasts within one feed or between each feed, I only fed from one breast in a four hour period, then changed sides for the next four hour period.

By far the best breast pads I found were ones which had absorbent gel or something in them - they were made by NUK. Could only get them in my local chemist or online, not big stores. Johnson's weren't bad either when I couldn't get the NUK ones. In the early days sometimes I didn't bother with a bra and pads and just lay back with a thick towel over my boobs!

Also try having your DD more upright so her head is higher than her bum when feeding.

Good luck - it does calm down eventually. I am still feeding DD at 2y3m and these difficulties are a distant memory.

I had a very similar problem and posted a few months ago. I got some good advice, the thread is here

Dd is now 13 weeks and copes fine.