Overactive letdown- breastfeeding help!

[Kate105]

My baby is 2 weeks old and up until now has fed very well. He’s gaining weight and nappies are as they should be etc. However, I’m having increasing problems when BF on one side. The milk is clearly coming in thick and fast so he’s struggling to cope with the volume. We end up in a horrible cycle of him crying and pulling off, milk spurting everywhere, him not winding well and being sick until either he exhausts himself or I top up with the other breast. This calms him down almost instantly- when it’s time to feed on that side he never has any issues and feeds like a dream.

I’ve done a lot of googling (Kellymom, LLL etc) and am working my way through the strategies, but nothing seems to be helping so far! It’s becoming really stressful and upsetting and it’s getting to the point where I absolutely dread the feeds when it’s the “turn” of the right breast because I know how horrible it’s going to be. Ironically, one of the suggestions for helping with overactive letdown is only feeding from one breast per feed, but this only seems to be making the problem worse.

Any help or advice gratefully received! I know it’s early days but I’m starting to find this really hard.

Before you feed from your right breast can you let the first bit out into a cup or something and then let baby latch once the flow settles a bit? I used to have to do this sometimes for my little one.

Thank you @TheBeautifulSouth44 I will try that!

I had this and found I had to feed from both sides as not doing so, made it worse.

Hand expressing or using my Haakaa for a couple of mins massively helped. I used that milk initially for a bottle so I could sleep, and then eventually froze it for the milk bank.

That’s interesting @MaverickDanger I wonder if only using one side each feed has affected me in the same way. It just seems to build up so quickly!

I honestly used to feel like I was waterboarding DS. He’d almost brace himself and then just gulp and gulp and gulp, while it just kind of sprayed all over his face.

Taking the initial edge off was what helped the most. Then I would say things settled more about 6 weeks in and then completely at about 4 months.

When ds2 was small I would have to express a bit off before each feed so he could cope. It was good because through the day that made up a whole feed and dh could give him a bottle when I went to bed early for a good stretch of sleep.

Get hakkas and put it on your heavy flow breast whilst feeding from the other one and then put him on the breast after you've taken all the let down out

Agree with @shouldistop express a little before a feed helps massively. I used to do this for feeding my daughter.

I suffered terribly with oversupply and forceful let down. I was like a fire hydrant - could drench someone across a room. In the end I used block feeding to bring down the supply and used to let the let down off into a muslin. Of course you can catch it and keep it but it always felt like loads of effort. So it went, latch baby > baby pulls off in a milk torrent > wait for forceful let down to finish > re-latch baby and resume feed. It took a few weeks to sort out. But it was manageable that way.

This is so helpful and reassuring thank you all! Late night purchase tonight is going to be a haaka I think!

Honestly never considered that this could be an issue when I was trying to get prepared for breastfeeding...

I've gone back to offering both sides at each feed since this afternoon and that does seem to be making a difference already. He's feeding now and hasn't been sprayed in the face this time yet 🤞🏻