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Infant feeding

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

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Original poster

lo pulling off breast and bottle

12 replies

bruhaha · 07/12/2007 23:17

my lo - 6 weeks corrected age as 2 months prem has started over the last two days pulling off my breast and the bottle. He latches on sucks a little pulls off and screams. He just sits with the bottle teat in his mouth and has been very crabbit. Spoke to HV and she says carry on over the weekend and see how he is. She asked about thrush but his mouth and my nipples seem fine.

Any suggestions to what this might be or is it normal.

OP posts:

Dalrymps · 07/12/2007 23:32

not sure but bumping for you as my ds is kind of doing this a bit today too

Original poster

bruhaha · 07/12/2007 23:36

thanks - hopefully someone will know if this is normal! i'm off to catch an hours sleep before he wakes up again

OP posts:

abibatousmum · 07/12/2007 23:41

does he have a cold or blocked nose at all? My dd did used to do this as she couldn't breathe and suckle at the same time. Sometimes you couldn't tell that was what the problem was. She also used to do it sometimes if the milk didn't let down straight away- her crying usually meant it started flowing everywhere immediately! That wouldn't explain why he does it with bottle feeding as well though... DD also would often not let me help her latch back on! I had to let her do it herself, even when she was very little, or she would get cross.

CloudAtlas · 07/12/2007 23:46

I am not an expert by any means, but similar happened to me. When did you try him on bottle for first time? Has he ever successfully taken a bottle?

Around the same time, six weeks ish, when the supply had established, dd struggled with let down. My let down was far too fast for her, I could really feel it and she couldn't cope with it. I can still picture the look on her face when in her mind I tried to drown her in breast milk. I did try giving her a bottle, but she didn't know what to do with it, and just sort of played around with it in her mouth. She eventually started to take a bottle at 7 and a half months.

Are you keen to bottle feed? Imo if you are having the same problems I had, and lo does actually start to take a bottle, then your bf days are numbered, because bottle is Soooooo much easier, so if you would like to bf at all, then I would suggest you work through the bf problems before you try a bottle.

There are a lot of things you can do to help your lo cope with the let down; I will try to find a link to a couple of threads I was on.

CloudAtlas · 07/12/2007 23:48

also, should say that I did a lot of internet research with dd1 and self diagnosed thrush as so many of the signs are the same, but with dd2 I realised exactly what it was. I successfully fed for 7 1/2 months, second time around.
Nipple shields helped quite a bit as they stopped the milk choking her

CloudAtlas · 07/12/2007 23:58

here here and here
also this is copied from one of those messages; I believe it is a copy of something tiktok posted: basically, one-sided feeding means only ever offering the same breast for 4,5 or 6 hours on the trot, so every time you feed in that time you use that breast only. Then you swap and do the same with the other breast. You may need to gently hand express to comfort levels only on that unused breast. Baby gets the amount of milk he needs, but it will be proportionately creamier, and with proportionately less lactose, and let down will be far less 'firey' for him. After two days or so you will produce rather less milk, but it will still easily be what he needs

Also kellymom is good, here

CloudAtlas · 07/12/2007 23:59

oooh, I have gone off on one haven't I? Hope it's useful, sorry if it's completely irrelevent. Good luck. Keep this bumped, someone brilliant will be around another time.

Original poster

bruhaha · 08/12/2007 03:50

cloudatlas - he has been taking a bottle since birth with no problems. He gets at least 2 a day with medicine.

At his last feed he was on the breast and fed/pulled for about an hour and eventually gave him a bottle with ebm and after 60mls fell asleep and has slept for 4 hrs. I've just fed him on the breast again and he only pulled off once and has now fallen asleep again. His feeding pattern has been erratic since we got him home from hospital - normally every 2 hours but recently some feeds have been 3-4 hrs but not all of them and no pattern to it.

Bottle feeding would be easier for me as i would know how much he was getting but i would have to express it - which means being stuck to the house.

I don't know if let down is the problem as he has been fine with it in the past. If anything i was wondering if he was getting enough milk- i take domperidone and have been trying to cut it down over the past couple of days - taking 2-3 instead of 4 and have noticed that my breast weren't as full, but this could be normal as well because my supply should be established by now? right?

it's all very confusing.

OP posts:

CloudAtlas · 08/12/2007 18:34

Oh sorry, I thought I may have gone off on a complete tangent. For me the bottle was a red herring and not part of the problem, but DD never really took to a bottle until she was much older. Also I didn't start to have any problems breastfeeding at all until they were about 6 or more weeks old, it all went fabulously smoothly until then. I expect it's irrelevent, but dd fed in a similar way to your ds.

I wouldn't have thought that your supply can be the problem unless his weight gain is a worry. I also wouldn't worry about the domperidone if you really need it, as it is apparently supposed to increase milk supply. see here

Can't offer anything useful I'm afraid except to say....phew! newborns eh??? It's lucky they're cute! Best of luck with it. If you keep bumping this then someone with lots of experience and bundles of knowledge about these things will be along. It may be Monday though.

Niecie · 08/12/2007 18:41

This might have been mentioned, although I had a quick scan and can't see anything, but I was wondering if he has an ear infection. They don't like to suck if their ears hurt. I don't know if your dS is too young to have one though. Certainly, my DS was a bit older when this was a problem with him.

CloudAtlas · 10/12/2007 09:29

bruhaha, hope it's going ok. Bumping for Monday crowd........

Original poster

bruhaha · 10/12/2007 17:46

hi cloudatlas - not too bad, he is still doing but took him to HV today and she said he looked fine - very alert and is putting on weight so not to worry about it.

OP posts:

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