Need practical help for (day and) night time "nibbler"

[Mummyfor3]

I have posted about this problem before but things are getting worse and I am hoping for some practical ideas:

DS3 is now 15 weeks old, doing well as far as he is concerned however is doing my head in by almost constant but rather inefficient BF. Today I have no idea how many feeds he has had as he has been on and off the boob all day (starting at 2 am, and I am not exagerating!). He sleeps v little, day or night, but falls asleep at the breast which means meaningful sucking ceases however he insists to continue holding the nipple in his mouth and any attempt to "withdraw" is met with irate protest.

I have 2 concerns: I am exhausted and getting resentful and also his weight gain is less than ideal (1 pound in 21 days) .

Please do not say this is cluster feeding or 3 month growth spurt: he has always been a bit like this, however rather than settling down things are getting worse. There is no routine at all, I am only surviving by co-sleeping and carrying him in a sling/carrier most of the day (never thought I would master BFing in sling, but heyho, guess what..?).

How can I get him to put is back into it to have a proper feed and then have 1 to 3 hours break?? Any ideas??

We solved the constant feeding with a dummy, but dd's weight gain was good..Could you express a feed? Dh used to do the last feed so I could go to bed early

Gets very angry if insulted with suggestion of dummy... - will sometimes accept little finger, MY little finger!

I have not expressed for a few weeks; certainly on days like today I do not have any opportunity to express as constantly BFing. Thank goodness my mum is currently visiting and doing all the cooking . My boobs are soft and empty feeling which does not help the old confidence that there is in fact enough milk.. . Having said that, he gets to the point where he lets milk run out of the corner of his mouth as half asleep on my lap, but will still not be put down/not allow me to roll away from him in bed.

My ds was like this for the first few weeks. But he had tongue tie, which caused a poor (and painful) latch which caused inefficient constant feeding and slowed weight gain. The poor latch meant he had to work really hard to get milk out, which tired him out so he was constantly "snacking". Have you checked whether there's any physical reason for the inefficient feeding? Have you seen a bf counsellor to see whether the latch can be improved? Sometimes just small changes in position can make a big difference.

I remember one day stopping counting when ds had been on the nipple for 12 hours solid, so you have my total empathy. He still feeds frequently now (every 2 hours at 23 weeks), but each feed lasts just a few minutes, so much easier. Also I used a no cry sleep solution method for getting him to accept removal of the nipple once asleep. You remove the nipple and gently push up on the lower jaw to keep their mouth closed. If he cries, put him back on, and try again when sucking stops again. Repeat ad nauseum, but eventually he gets tired of rerooting and will sleep on his own for a while.

My older son was like this but had excessive weight gains, if he wasn't attached to my ( at one point bleeding nipples) he was crying. At about 12 weeks we started him on the CLB routines and after a couple of very difficult days this really helped and he was solely breatfed until he was 5 months.

My son who is currenly 6 weeks old was born weighing 10 lbs 14 ozs and started to want to feed constantly at 4 weeks so we also follow the CLB routines for him now and he is content being breastfed with one bottle feed each day.

I'm no expert on BF but I have had a very similar problem with DC2 and DC3.

What I did / am still doing (as DC3 is 5 weeks old) is take them out in the pushchair or car to take their mind off feeding. Sometimes it only gave me a 30 mins break but that was much needed - my boobs were sooooo sore.

Try to ignore the soft and empty feeling of your boobs - that is really misleading. Mine felt like that earlier but I know DC3 has had loads of milk as he has just thrown it all back at me (overfeeding)

definitely agree to checking if he has tounge tie though.

hth