Am I force-feeding my baby?

[FeedingProblems22]

I have a 15 week old and for the past few weeks he's become a very fussy feeder. He's EBF and until about 12 weeks was taking a daily bottle of expressed milk but then started to reject it. Shortly afterwards he also started to take much shorter breastfeeds and would scream if I tried to feed him more. As he seemed to be distracted I started feeding him in a dark room. He still screams for a while at the boob (sometimes quite a while) but then settles and has a long feed although I can't tell how awake he is when he does it. My worry is that he's not distracted, he's actually full and I'm overfeeding him by making him continue eating. And that in the short term I'm making him confused about dark room = nap or sleep and in the longer term that I'm going to give him some kind of eating disorder as he's not allowed to stop when he's full.

Does anyone have any wise words to help me?

Oh and just to add that it's definitely not thrush, I just had him checked by a doctor.

I think you're massively over thinking all of this @FeedingProblems22.

Firstly, it doesn't matter how long they feed for as long as they're following their centiles, it could be half an hour or 5 mins. They still take roughly 25 floz in 24 hours at this age. Obviously if he's not gaining weight, that's a different thing.

If you take him into a dark room, is he actually feeding for longer? Sometimes they can do these fluttery type of sucks in their sleep.

There's also pretty good evidence that you can't overfeed a BF baby.

Honestly, in my experience they all go through phases of acting the goat when they’re feeding and they just throw up or poo out what they don’t need. It certainly won’t give him an eating disorder.

Thanks both, he's going up centiles at the moment which is another reason I'm concerned I'm overfeeding him. On the other hand he is doing large and frequent poos so maybe it is all just going straight through!

Is he tall as well @FeedingProblems22?

@BunnyRuddington yes, tall for weight.

In my experience tall babies often feed more anyway.

Sounds like your both doing fine

Why don't you just take a week completely following his queues. When he stops feeding just let him and see what happens.
Ds2 only ever fed for 5 mins after the newborn days.

Very good suggestion shouldi. My DC2 only every fed for 5 mins as well which was a big shock after having one with tongue tie

I'm scared to feed to his cues in case he suddenly starts to wake to feed more in the night. He's just started sleeping through (10 hours!) and I'm worried he'll start to rely on night feeds again. Maybe I should just pick a quiet week and try it.

I wouldn't overthink sleep op, you'll drive yourself mad. Ds2 slept through at that age, stopped sleeping through at 4 months and (fingers crossed) has only just started sleeping through again now at 13 months. None of it was to do with how much milk he drank.
Just keep a good, age appropriate nap and bedtime routine.

Totally agree with should. You'll drive yourself mad trying to guess how they'll sleep.

Go with his cues for a week, sounds like it will feee up a lot of time to do more interesting things for you or just napping

How are you getting on @FeedingProblems22

Hi, Just to update on this: one day, about 3-4 weeks after he became fussy my baby woke up and started to do quick, concentrated feeds. What had been taking over an hour of stop-start feeding, screaming on the boob, sitting in the dark etc. suddenly started taking 20 mins (10 mins to really drain each boob). I guess, like everything else with babies this was just a phase.

For anyone else with this issue, I would say that making the extra effort to make sure he had good feeds was worth it. I don't think his appetite dropped, just that he was distracted. However I never did get round to feeding to his cues and I'm not sure what would have happened if I had. In the end it helped my anxiety to make sure he was fed and it doesn't seem to have done any long term harm (hopefully).