Losing Mind - Topping up with Expressed Breast Milk

[Matthew54]

Hi everyone,

I am losing my mind a little bit. I have an oversupply problem and it’s been recommended to me to reduce pumping and try to exclusively breast feed my son, who was born at 34 weeks. He’s now 5 weeks old.

I had been topping him up and have reduced those top ups - but he seems fussy afterward and isn’t napping well. His diapers also seem more mucusy. His weight gain has also stalled over the past few days.

I don’t know if I want to stop top ups at this point. So my question is: 1) how much do I give him in a top up at this point? He regularly houses whatever we give him even after a ton of time on the breast and I can tell he’s getting milk there. 2) can he over feed from a bottle of breast milk? He doesn’t seem overwhelmed and drinks fairly slowly.

I'd recommend contacting la leche league. One option for oversupply is to block feed ( so only feed from one boob for 2-3 hours). Are you certain oversupply is the problem though as one would more likely expect rapid growth than slowing growth with oversupply.

Hi,

A lactation consultant diagnosed me with oversupply, likely stemming from my time double pumping + breast feeding while he was in hospital.

He’s now not gaining as much because my oversupply is causing him massive issues with spitting up. He’s basically emptying the entire contents of his stomach. When I manually express into the sink before feeding it’s like a super soaker.

It does sound difficult. As you know the problem with pumping and topping up is that you will worsen your oversupply so make it harder for baby to cope. Is your baby holding to their growth curve now despite the problem with reflux? If so you might be best off not pumping and topping up. Alternatively if he's not holding to his centile without top ups, maybe consider a breast shell to catch the let down without stimulating the breast and top up with that passively collected milk rather than pumping? Has the lactation consultant assessed his latch? It's possible that the reflux is caused by him almost getting shot off the breast by a fast and heavy letdown meaning he's swallowing lots of air and then vomiting. If so you're doing the right thing in trying to let off the heaviest flow before feeding him directly however if you're going to keep topping up, collect that milk rather than expressing down the sink and top up with that so that you're not again worsening your oversupply. I've not had an early baby but I do have a low on the centile chart baby and I would desperately love to feed him up the centiles but remember that steady growth along his curve is absolutely fine... you don't need to top up just to get him to go up the centiles. So long as you're pace feeding with the bottle I dont think you'll overfeeding him but you will be much better off feeding him little and often than topping up straight after a big breastfeed as that may be contributing to his bringing milk back up as his tummy is so tiny.

Congratulations on your LO

Kellymom has some useful information on how to reduce top-ups here, although it talks about formula top-ups the process should be the same.

Have you read this on oversupply? I think it mentions block feeding if I remember correctly although my support did settle more after around 6 weeks both times

Thank you! The kellymom resource was exactly what we were looking for. Thank you so much!

No problem. Kellymom is evidence based which is why it's probably mentioned on MN so much.

And I meant my supply settled at around 6 weeks, not my support 🤦‍♀️