Why does my DD keep rejecting my boob in the evening?!?

[KitKat1985]

Hi all.

Just wondering what your thoughts on this are: DD (aged 7 and a half weeks) still cluster feeds of an evening and tends to be quite irritable around this time. She will merrily take my boob in the daytime and at night but for some reason in the evening she will often reject going on my boob after a (long) while of cluster-feeding - say after about two hours (she'll just scream hysterically after I latch her on and keep pulling away). However she's clearly still hungry - screaming, chomping on fingers etc, and if she's offered a bottle of expressed milk she'll wolf it down. I'm wondering if after her cluster feeding off my boobs for a couple of hours she just literally empties them and the eventual screaming is because I don't have any more milk to give her? If it was wind etc surely she would reject bottles too? I don't know what to do. Also thought she was supposed to be growing out of evening cluster feeding now. Or is she just being lazy? Should I persevere with expressing milk to give her in the evenings and hope this is a passing phase, or give in and start mix feeding? I'm seriously fed up of her screaming all evening and finding it really hard work.

My 10 week old does something similar which I think is due to fast let down - there's a great article on kellymom: kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/supply-worries/fast-letdown/ on symptoms and treatment.

I had this problem with mine. She would start coming on and of the boob I finally worked out it was wind. So just sat her up and winded her when she started fussing. I also found when she was cluster feeding passing her over to her dad for 20 mins while I got ready for bed really calmed her down. A walk around the hall in the dark really helped before she fed again and went to sleep.

My 11 week old does this although he's a bit strange in that he feeds well during the day,has his bath, is all smiles and then the minute he's dressed for bed, starts screaming. He can literally be cooing and smiling seconds earlier. It's then a screaming match to get him to take a feed but he's better with a bottle. More often than not he goes to bed having hardly fed but is still managing to sleep from 8pm to past midnight so I kind of hope it's a phase....albeit it's been lasting for about 6 weeks now.....

I've had this a couple of times too... DD is 11 weeks. I'm pretty sure it's frustration that my milk isn't that plentiful at the end of the day. But like heather, my LO then has a really long stretch of sleep so I assume she's getting what she needs earlier in the day.

Mine used to do this sometimes after a long time feeding, not totally sure why but I suspect sometimes he would be overtired but for whatever reason couldn't quite drop off and then got cross. I would stop feeding him and walk him up and down for at least half an hour (sometimes in the sling) before trying to feed him again. I had to look at the clock though because if he was really wound up half an hour seemed like a very long time! Sometimes walking him in the sling would send him to sleep before the half hour was up.

Thank you for all of your replies. I've been letting her sleep a bit more in the daytime the past few days (previously had been trying to keep her awake as much as possible in the afternoon / evenings) and she seems to be doing better so wondering if she was getting over-tired and hysterical. Hopefully letting her sleep more will fix the problem (also ironically I think she is sleeping better at night with more day sleep). xx

We had this. It was either wind, or wanting to feed to go to sleep but then getting cross that there was milk coming out.

If she's a sucky baby a dummy might help, or a clean little finger.