7 week old seems to not enjoy breastfeeding :(

[lastnightopenedmyeyes]

My 7 week old daughter just doesn't seem to enjoy her milk. She generally only feeds for 5-10 minutes every 2 hours and retches and gags a lot during the feed. If I keep her at the breast or offer her the other side she gets hysterical. She's gaining weight but has dropped down the percentiles from 75% at birth to 40% now. My eldest was such a good feeder, and loved his milk (fed him til he was 2.5!!) so I'm a bit stumped and worried. She's been cutting back daily on her feeds this week, she does have a slight cold but nothing serious. Lots of wet nappies and she poos once a day (all normal - no green or frothy stuff) Any ideas? I'm starting to feel like there's something wrong with my milk :(

Forgot to say, her latch is very good so I'm not worried about that.

Check out the symptoms on this link

kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/supply-worries/fast-letdown/ - it could be easily solved if it is this?

Sorry you're going through it. Hope you work something out that you feel happy with.

Thanks. I know my let down is very fast as if she comes off the breast she gets milk sprayed all over her face and hair. It makes her so unhappy :( I was the same with my son but I'm sure he fed a lot more than this. But you may be right, it may all be down to this.

And I can tick every one of these symptoms - so thanks for the link. Good old kellymom

Good old Kelly mom, it's great. Maybe start feeding lying down on a pillow, raised a bit, but her lying on you? Gravity will help

I remember being miserable at 7 weeks as people had said it'd get better at 6 week lies but it was just my forceful let down.

Night feeds are always longer and we do those laying down, so that makes sense

Hi I had this with my dd. It got to the point where she stopped gaining weight and due to all the writhing about would swallow lots of air and throw up most of a feed. Assuming I had not enough milk (good old health visitor opinion vs naive first time mum) I made the situation worse by feeding her everytime she threw up which increased my supply further. It was only when we srarted introducing solids that things improved. She chunked up big time as my supply settled down. I wasn't as paranoid about constantly feeding her as her solids intake was good, plus she stayed on my breast 10 minytes instead of one minyte and stopped clamping my nipples. She only possetted occasionslly and when she did it was creamy rather than watery, and my letdown no longer hurt. I realised then that I had overactive letdown and an oversupply so the poor child had been filling up on water for the past few months. Yours sounds like oversupply too. Hth!

Oh op I also noticed that night feeds were crycual for weught gain as she was more relaxed and took more milk ...

Thank you. My letdown is painful too and (if she stays on longer than 10 mins) I get several per feed. I also soak through breast pads extremely quickly, and she possets often.

Funnily enough though, if I try and express I get nothing Used to get loads with DS. I've given up trying though as no reason for me to express this time.

My magic week number was about 11/12. People always said it would be better by 6 weeks but because of supply being forceful, and like you, painful, it was much later that my boobs worked out how much to produce.

Hand expressing rather than pump worked better. I use to look at photos of dd and once I got the let down, 7oz in a jug straight away!

It might be worth calling on the bf helplines, they may mirror what Kelly mom is saying but it might think of something else too.

Hope you feel ok today

Thanks fadbook. She's still not feeding much, and slept 9 hours straight last night so I woke up feeling like I was going to explode! But she's very content in herself and when she does feed she is satisfied.