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Infant feeding

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

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Original poster

Baby writhing and struggling at the breast, please help

20 replies

mrsbabookaloo · 20/08/2006 11:25

Hi,
My DD is 10 weeks old. I am mixed feeding her as she did not gain much weight and by week 7 I was advised to supplement. I give her 2oz of formula after each day time feed - each breastfeeding session is lasting about 40 mins and then I give the bottle. We've been doing this for a couple of weeks and she is gaining weight and seems more settled, but yesterday at every breastfeed after a few minutes she started whining (while still latched on) wrtihing her body, kicking her legs, pushing her hands against me, pulling her head back and going bright red in the face. She seems really angry and frustrated and this is painful and upsetting for me, and she isn't really getting much breastmilk because I have to take her off. I took her off and tried again over and over yesterday but each time I had to give up and give her the bottle.
I know this may be that she is getting used to the bottle and doesn't want the hard work of breastfeeding any more, but she was OK for the first couple of weeks. She has done this before occasionally even before we started the bottle feeding.
In the night she breastfed OK and first thing this morning.
Could it be wind or tummy ache? I try to wind her between each breast.
Sorry for long post: does anybody have any experience of this?
Thanks

OP posts:

amijee · 20/08/2006 16:38

Hi there

I'm a new 1st time mum so I hope I'm not speaking about stuff I don't know about but it sounds familiar. My baby sometimes does this ( I am breast feeding exclusively) and in my case it's either due to 1. wind 2. not enough milk left in that breast 3. He doesn't wanna feed but wants to do something else like sleep but is still making latching on gestures.

I try winding ( and giving him to my husband who is better at it than me!) swapping sides or just abandoning the feed. For you it mght be worth trying to express ( with a good electric pump) as you can see how much milk is left.

Hope this is helpful, good luck x x x

VeniVidiVickiQV · 20/08/2006 16:47

Agree it could be wind or frustration. DS used to do this and I never got to teh bottom of why.

The problem with mixed feeding is that it inevitably will affect your milk supply. Baby will suck more and feed more to stimulate more milk. if you are counteracting that by giving a bottle at teh end of each feed then this wont happen effectively.

There may be some confusion over bottle/breast feeding - and certainly milk flows freer from a bottle. Babies have to work harder to breastfeed. If you wanted to exclusively breastfeed again, then iti s possible to revert back to that - im sure mears or tiktok or someone else more knowledgeable will be along soon to advise.

bumbleweed · 20/08/2006 20:35

mrsbaboo, big hugs for you as bf can be really hard, I found it so, and especially when baby seems to be rejecting breast and you are concerned about her weight gain

hopefully someone will be along with good advice soon but in the meantime, have a look at the kellymom.com website here

Original poster

mrsbabookaloo · 21/08/2006 10:31

bump

OP posts:

princessmel · 21/08/2006 10:38

Hi, don't have any new advice I'm afraid but I thought I'd post so that it stays bumped up. I had some screaming/feeding probs with dd but she was just bf. I think it was a mixture of wind, tiredness, fast flow etc. Maybe your lo is getting confused or frustrated at the change between bottle and boob. Do you think you'd like to try just breast feeding? Hope someone else can help you xxxx

buffythenappyslayer · 21/08/2006 10:40

it does sound like wind.my dd was like this and i had to take her off the boob half way through a feed and wind her than put her back on.

also you could try giving some infacol before a feed,that might help.

princessmel · 21/08/2006 10:42

Ooh yeah infacol, we did that. It did help actually.

hotmama · 21/08/2006 10:45

Sounds like wind to me - very similar to my dd2! I would persevere with the winding - perhaps changing winding positions etc. I found that having a muslin over my shoulder and resting dd2 against me and then rubbing her back would usually result in a huge burp (and posset down by back - hence the muslin )

It was difficult to get dd2 to burp sometimes - I found Infacol did help. HTH

Enid · 21/08/2006 10:56

dd3 does this when she is knackered and cant settle herself

mummyplonk · 21/08/2006 11:10

Babookaloo, ds is 12 wks and has just started doing exactly the same thing, have had to give him about 3 ozs after switching breasts twice to satisfy him, he is very good at bringing his wind up so I know it's not that.

And exactly the same no problem at all with nightime breastfeeding just seems to be early evening and first thing in the morning with me.

princessmel · 21/08/2006 11:22

My dd was fine in the night too. I think they are much more relaxed then and so are you. It was worse in the eve which makes me think that tiredness was a factor too.

VeniVidiVickiQV · 21/08/2006 11:26

My advice no good then?

mummyplonk · 21/08/2006 12:04

No, you are right VVV if I was a baby I would probably want to go for the easy option as well and it is going to end up with the supply dwindling even more unless we keep putting the baby to the breast.

Haily111 · 21/08/2006 12:31

Hello mrsbabookaloo,

i am also a first time mom so don't want to talk out of turn. It is just my healthvisitor told me to give my daughter supplement as she wasn't gaining fast enough either, the only thing is it has been proven that breastfed baby's gain weight slower than bottlefed baby's, and i find HV's are so quick to say now to give baby's a supplement instead of letting baby's gain weight slower. I find it quite sad as i also had big problems latching on (due to inverted nipples) and noone seemed to have time to come out and give me a hand! (sorry about the rant)

But you can be very proud of yourself if you are still breastfeeding, it is not as easy as people make out it is!

Take care!!

Original poster

mrsbabookaloo · 21/08/2006 12:39

Thanks for all the advice. She's been a bit more settled today so maybe just a passing phase. I will keep trying to wind her though. I do want to go back to just breastfeeding but it's hard to see how it will work now.have sort of lost faith in my boobs.

I am getting lots of support: have an appt with bf counsellor tomorrow at King's: have seen her a couple of times already, but she didn't have much to say about this writhing problem except that it meant there wasn't enough milk, which made me feel like crap. I'm on Domperidone to increase supply and I pump in the morning (with not much success).

Hailly111:I waited 2 more weeks after the HV advised supplement, because I thought she was too quick to advise it. Didn't do it until bf counsellor said she was worried about her.

Thanks again to all. Everyone is always so nice and helpful.

OP posts:

VeniVidiVickiQV · 21/08/2006 12:44

Mrs B, your boobs can do it!

Usually lots of skin to skin contact is recommended to help settle baby and encourage milk flow. The more you express and feed your baby, the more milk you will produce. Milk is produced on a demand basis so the more you demand, the more it will make.

Expressing can be really difficult, so don't worry if you dont manage it so well - it doesnt mean the milk isnt there. I have been b/feeding for 16 months now and expressing for about 10 months here and there and occasionally I get very little milk out.

Try and relax, looking at your baby or a picture of your baby whilst expressing is helpful.

jabberwocky · 21/08/2006 12:46

I had this same problem with ds. Please try to persevere. I had PND and got so upset I went to giving ebm exclusively. I wish now that I had tried a little harder to work through it. There are some new nipples that have several little holes in the top instead of just one larger one that are supposed to make baby work harder, i.e. similar to bfing. I am going to look into those this time around and see if it makes a difference, as I have to go back to work part-time at 8 weeks so not giving a bottle is not an option for me.

Haily111 · 21/08/2006 12:51

I think it is brill that you are perservering (if thats how its spellt!!!:-))

I also agree with VeniVidiVickiQV about the milk flow.

When i did use a bottle i used the Closer to Nature Bottles from Tommee Tippee, they were brilliant!

MissGolightly · 21/08/2006 16:55

Hello, I am a new mum so not at all expert, but I wanted to ask if you had received any advice from your HV/BF counsellor about using a supplementer? I have never used one but have seen information about it on other sites. Some stuff is at this website

From what I've read it seems that you kind of feed a thin tube of formula down your boob so the baby sucks both breast milk and formula at the same time. The idea is to give maximum skin-to-skin and nipple stimulation to help boost breast milk. It may not solve the writhing but it might help boost your milk supply and if breast/bottle nipple confusion is part of the problem might help that too.

For what it's worth my DS is exclusively breast-fed and often has times when he is very frustrated with the breast, hits it, wriggles furiously, etc etc. I think he's just expressing his frustration with the world at large in the only way he knows how!

I so much admire you for persevering, especially with the EBM. Good luck!

morethan1 · 23/08/2006 22:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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