Baby refusing left breast

[IHatePumping88]

Any advice? My right breast is filling up with so much milk, it's quite full, rock hard and sore every morning and I'm worried about mastitis.

Baby is 6 months old. My right breast is bigger (always had been, pre-pregnancy too) and produces more milk. When I pump, I get double the amount of milk from my right, in half the time. So I guess baby has caught on to that and now prefers the right. I can only get him on my left breast after he's had a bit of milk from the right. He will absolutely not latch to my left when he's hungry.

I am also noticing that the latch on the left is always a bit superficial lately. I latch him on correctly but he pulls away and spits the boob out and re-latches superficially.

Funnily enough, when he was a newborn, the right was really problematic as he had a neck muscle issue, was really tense and couldn't latch properly on my right and kept biting it. So for the first month my right boob was incredibly sore and I used to cry every single time it was time to put him on my right boob!!!

I’d call La Leche League if I were you - they’re really helpful with this sort of thing.

I had similar and still do, one boob much fuller than the other! If it were me, I think I’d let baby stay on the right boob for a bit to release the rock hard feeling (I remember the bliss off breastfeeding releasing that!) though not completely “empty” it (as that will stimulate more) and then I would move baby to left (and stroke her feet!) and also I think I’d pump from a bit more from the left to keep stimulating it to produce milk and even things up a bit.

but I’m no expert so LLL best place to start!

Any indication of an ear infection? Sometimes a baby will feel pain while trying to feed on one side if an ear is hurting.

I second the advice above from Brinkley22, but also want to add:

You could try latching on in a different position, e.g. rugby hold, which can trick babies into thinking it's the other breast for long enough to latch properly and work at getting a let down.

You could also try breast compressions while feeding to increase the flow and stimulate an earlier let down, which will increase satisfaction/desire to stay latched properly and feed on that side more often.

My youngest did this recently at 8 months old. He kept hardly feeding from the left side and always wanting the right. It led to the milk in the left slowly decreasing and now at 10 months he only feeds from the right.

I don’t know the reason but we had to use a nipple shield on the left as a newborn, and my eldest preferred the right side too.

Sorry not really got any advice but just sharing my experience that it does happen and we’re happily carrying on one sided (and not as lopsided as you would imagine!).

Have you tried different feeding positions like football hold? So start off on the right and then slide him over to the left on top of a cushion beside you, so he's still lying on the same side

@Poppins2016 @EternallyUnsurprised we did the rugby hold a lot in the first 3 months. It would take like a million pillows to do that comfortably now so that hasn't really occurred to me.

Are your nipples the same?. I have one inverted nipple (but only slightly - it's not that obvious) and was only ever able to feed from one side.

It's absolutely fine. Women with only one breast successfully EBF. Women successfully EBF twins. You may face some scepticism from HCP (I did), be told you have to pump etc, but it is entirely possible to breast feed from one breast only if that is the baby's preference.

Your supply will quickly adjust to match what the baby is drinking. Are you demand feeding?

DD2 was like this and one day when hand expressing on the left side, a huge thick clog came out 🤢 I think she maybe had felt the change in flow and didn't like it? Anyway, she was always quite fussy on the left but much better after that. So I'd try some hand expressing in addition to the pump, because I think sometimes the pumps don't quite have the same knack.

She also had a right side preference. We did football hold on the left and cradle hold on the right. I took her to a paediatric osteopath for 4 sessions and that helped her with the position preferences a bit too.