Babymooning a 5 mo old to boost supply..

[Spink]

Today we are trying some babymooning (hanging out doing lots of skin to skin & feeding) to try & boost my supply. It's not quite as blissful / easy as I'd imagined 😂 & I wondered how other people got on with it!

For background- Dd2 has not put much weight on from the start, but more recently has been losing weight & has now dropped 3 centiles from her birth weight to the 0.4th. We think her happy place would be the 9th centile as she was tracking that for a little while.

We're seeing a dietician who has prescribed 1x daily high cal formula & other than that, BF every 2-3 hours. Except overnight as dd2 sleeps through from 10-5 & will not dreamfeed or be woken to feed ..

the last few days dd's been pretty grumpy during BF & I thought she might be frustrated with speed of flow / not getting enough. I gave her some EBM after one of these grumpy feeds & she guzzled it. So looks like she's not getting enough milk & the HV & dietician suggested babymooning.

So here we are, mostly naked, leaking milk, slightly too cold & not v comfortable...

.

Have you tried lots of oats / oaty snacks and fenugreek supplements? Worked wonders for my supply! Hope things get easier soon

Have you seen a good lactation consultant?

Could it be a milk transfer issue rather than a supply issue (esp if you are leaking milk)?

I hadn't thought of that! Will a Health Food store have them, or a pharmacy?

Definitely try the oaty foods and fenugreek first. And absolutely loads of water, plain water is best, just as much as you can manage, it really helps!
Porridge for breakfast and hobnobs to snack on. Holland and barrett or any health food shop will have fenugreek, and fennel tea can help too.

little Its not normally a leaky process, just today.. maybe because she's suckling more or less constantly & that means she's bobbing on & off, & if it's in the middle of a let down it goes everywhere!

we did see a lactation consultant a couple of months ago & she thought latch, positioning etc all ok... dd has Down syndrome & her probs with weight gain are thought to be to do with that.. She gets tired feeding & when she was v little she had problems maintaining the latch. The lactation cons advised us to use a nipple shield as that's like 'scaffolding' to help her stay on the boob, & it helped massively (& didn't seem to affect supply) She doesn't always need the shield now, only when she's tired.

up until the last few days she's not shown any signs of frustration/ hunger after BFs.

I've just had my first period after having her dso wonder if that's made a difference to supply?

Fenugreek made me smell really unpleasant, I was sweating it!

lovely something to look forward to...& it means I get to share the fun with dh!

@Spink it sounds like you're doing really well! I found around the time of my period bf'ing was always difficult so may also not be helping matters. I ordered my fenugreek on amazon with prime but have seen it in Holland and Barrett! Oatcakes are a good snack too! And yes gallons of water also. All the best

Thanks Nurse! Did the fenugreek make you smell too?!

No I didn't notice it at all! Although maybe I always smell