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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Oversupply?

2 replies

Soupqueen · 01/12/2013 11:02

My daughter is 6 weeks and 5 days and, after a lot of googling, think I might have an oversupply problem.

She often pulls off choking at the start of a feed. She takes in lots of air and suffers badly from trapped wind as a result. She never feeds for long (15-20 minutes would be a long feed for her) yet is putting on lots of weight (12 ounces last week). We do have some calm, relaxed, lovely feeds but equally we have lots of fussy, thrashy, pulling on and off feeds. We have the occasional green nappy, but usually they are mustardy. She does still produce a lot of dirty nappies.

Oddly, my breasts never leaked at all, until last week and now they occasionally do.

On reading the advice to deal with it, I'm not sure how to tackle it. The main advice seems to be to feed from one breast at a feeding (I was doing this anyway, I didn't know you were supposed to offer both Blush), and use that same breast if she feeds again within 2 hours. Again, I was already doing that instinctively.

I hadn't been expressing, just tried it once Friday for the first time as I have a couple of things coming up where it would be a lot easier to leave her with Daddy and some expressed milk. I got 4 ounces in 8 minutes.

I am experimenting with different positions, but am limited as she is wearing a Pavlik harness for hip dysplasia so it's a bit awkward.

What can I do to address the oversupply? Will I be able to express or should I resign myself to not being able to do that?

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CheeseTMouse · 01/12/2013 11:14

I'm sure there are others who will be able to help and know more but I have just been through this. My daughter is now 15 weeks.

For me I found that I had a very fast let down so lots of spluttering at the start of a feed. What I did was to let her feed until I could feel the first let down of milk, detach the baby and then catch the squirting milk in a muslin. Then reattach the baby when it calmed down.

To address the supply issue I fed off one breast - but all day. When the other was too full I then expressed that completely. I did this for several days. I am sure there are better ways and more structured ways to do this, but it helped me.

It did settle down for me, but I had a couple of frustrating weeks. I guess in the early stage it is your body and baby sorting out what you both need in tetms of supply and demand.

Soupqueen · 01/12/2013 14:36

I never actually feel the let down. I have weird boobs. Ironically, in the early weeks I was convinced I had no milk at all due to not feeling a let down and having no leaks.

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