Baby will only feed when sleepy

[Sunflower160]

My 15 week old DS is breastfed and each week I seem to be having a different problem, whether it be him cluster feeding through the night non stop or on a complete nursing strike! For the past few days I’ve only managed to get him to latch on and have some milk when he is sleepy and in suckling mode. If he’s wide awake, or agitated, he simply will not latch on. I’m having to rock him and get him sleepy every time he’s due a feed, which doesn’t always work, and then he gets upset because he’s hungry but is in too much of an upset state to latch on. Is this normal? Anyone else experienced this problem?

I had a lot of similar problems BF around that time (12-16 weeks). DD would get hysterical, arch her back, refuse to latch and I had to rock her to sleep (difficult with hungry baby) and feed her the instant she woke up. I eventually realised that swaddling her before feeding tends to calm her down for a few seconds, enough to get a latch. And it also helped because she couldn‘t thrash her arms and legs around.

I read somewhere it‘s not ideal to swaddle a baby during feeding since you‘re forcefully restraining her/him but without that I would have had to give up BF. She was always happy after a feed so I‘m sure it was the right choice. Some babies are easily frustrated at the speed of let-down, milk flow, only want to drink from one side etc and will work themselves into a state despite being hungry.

The good news is that it does pass. I spent weeks carrying a swaddling cloth around and only being able to feed her on a bed/sofa from my right breast (had to pump the other one as she hated that side). Then around 18 weeks she suddenly decided she liked BFing and would latch without any fuss day or night on both breasts.

Good luck and fingers crossed it passes soon!

Following with interest. I'm in the same boat at 10 weeks and it makes the nights so hard because if she wakes up too much she won't take a feed back to sleep. She's incredibly distressed and I can't get her to latch at all unless just rousing or about to sleep.

OP, I wanted to update what's going on with us in case it's relevant to you! My DD had a particularly hideous nappy this evening as well as one in the middle of the night last night – coupled with the nursing aversion it was enough for 111 to send us to A&E. They think DD has a stomach virus – mild enough that we're allowed home but a definite reason for the agitation and aversion. We've got a few more days of dreamfeeding ahead of us now, along with Calpol and keeping an eye out for signs of dehydration. Luckily she's an efficient feeder so we're still getting wet nappies, but the poor mite is exhausted – 8 hours sleep in the last 24!

Might be worth taking your DS to the GP to rule out anything? We ruled out thrush first, which can also cause some fussing.