Sudden reduction in supply

[suis]

DS is 12 weeks now and a big lad (15lbs !)and exclusively bfed. He sleeps for about 8 hours at night (don't hate me) which means I wake up with leaky uncomfortable basketballs down my top and I've been able to express about 200mls from one side first thing in the morning, while DS has the other side.

However, just in the last few days I've been getting less and less, only got 100mls today. In addition DS has been feeding very grequently, but only for short spells and then fussing a lot before pulling away, making me think he's not getting enough milk. Tonight he didn't go off to sleep as usual and I had to give him an extra feed to get him to drop off and I am thinking that he might still have been hungry.

Can supply just suddenly drop away like that ? Am I making the wrong assumptions about what is happening ? What can I do to get it back ? Help !

From my personal experience what is happening is that your body is adjusting to your feeding pattern. I found after a while of ds sleeping for a decent period that I no longer got engorged over night. Oddly though if I skip a feed at another time I will still get that uncomfortable feeling. It's clever - your body just seems to "know" when you'll need the milk. That would explain why you have less milk to express off.

The fussiness is also familiar. They just go through stages of this ime and if you go with the flow and give extra feeds if they need it things will settle down.

Hope you are right Shona !

DS got weighed today and has had his smallest weekly weight gain for ages. I'm just hoping that it's a blip and not another sign of the milk going.

Agree with Shona re the engorgement, I think it's pretty normal to find that your supply adjusts and you lose that basketball feeling around this time. 12 weeks is a classic "growth spurt" period - his fussiness etc could be him getting frustrated with the milk not coming fast enough and the frequent feeding could be his attempt to get your milk supply up. If you go with the flow and feed when he wants then your supply will adjust. It's clever like that! Don't worry too much about how much you can express, what you can express in no way reflects what your body will produce in response to a baby suckling especially as time goes by. Weight gain too will go in fits and starts, it's not always a uniform thing.