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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

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Original poster

Evening supply problem

17 replies

stripeywoollenhat · 31/03/2009 20:08

My 10 week old is spending several hours every evening nursing - by which i mean alternating furious sucking and disconsolate howling. Clearly my supply/let down is insufficient as far as she is concerned. I am wondering if i should introduce a bottle of expressed bm as my let down is clearly not going to speed up and i am finding the hours of miserable crying quite hard to take. Can anybody advise me? Any way of speeding up the letdown without having to find time to express during the day? tia

OP posts:

DevilsAdvocaat · 31/03/2009 20:13

just keep letting her suckle on your breast and your body will start to produce more milk at this time.

it's very hard but if you give ebm now your body will never produce that feed at that time.

is there anyone to help jig her about the room to give you a break?

DevilsAdvocaat · 31/03/2009 20:14

forgot to say, ds was the same at this age and it did eventually pass.

giantkatestacks · 31/03/2009 20:16

stripey - we had this and it turned out that ds was tired and not hungry at all - not that yours will be but just putting it out there...

Turniphead1 · 31/03/2009 20:21

I have to say, I thought maybe overtired when I read the post. Is she feeding more than 2 hours since her last nap? (My DD does however sometimes get cross at the letdown not being quick enough at this time of the day sometimes too - I just let her spend a lot of time on the breast as Devils suggested)

mppaw · 31/03/2009 20:22

Hi SWH, I felt like this with my DS in the early days. My boobs would feel like there was nothing in them and DS would get the right ump when trying to feed.
The only thing I can suggest is feed more during the day and early evening to try and increase production. This definately helped us out, also he was trying to feed when in actual fact he was v tired. I read something that says babies can sometimes get confused between being hungry and tired, esp in the early days.
How about trying a dummy ? I did not use a dummy with DD, but had to use one with DS as this calmed him down alot.
HTH.

Original poster

stripeywoollenhat · 31/03/2009 20:32

i can't work out whether it's hunger or exhaustion - thought the bottle might help to clarify this. she's not really much of a one for going to sleep, much rocking and use of hairdryer is required. i wouldn't mind the hours of feeding if she was happy during them, but there really is a lot of crying and fist waving. mppaw - she's not really happy to use a dummy, i would be happy for her to use one rather than my nipples if she would go for it.

OP posts:

DevilsAdvocaat · 31/03/2009 20:37

swh, my instinct would be if she was tired she would fall asleep on the boob. however, i only have ds a reference so may not be the case for you.

emb is fine but you will have to give her this every day and so express an extra feed every day which in the end may become tiresome.

have you heard of cluster feeding?

mppaw · 31/03/2009 20:37

This sounds exactly like DS. And I struggled to figure out if he was hungry, tired etc. But looking back I think he was defo tired as he was a sod for sleeping during the day, so come 8pm, it was complete meltdown here!!
He is not a fan of the dummy, but I used to hold it in til he was sucking on it and it calmed him down, not for long mind you, but it gave us a couple of minutes of peace !!
Keep at it as it will defo pass, and maybe start the cluster feeding a little earlier.

giantkatestacks · 31/03/2009 20:38

Using the hairdryer - god that takes me back to my ds. we used to do that as well...

Stripey - do you have an evening routine going on? I would have thought that if this has been going on for a while then your supply would have caught up - could you instead try with the whole 5pm feed then play, bath, massage, sleeping bag, dim lights feed, bed thing? I know its easier said than done believe me but worth a try - just because shes crying anyway as you said and not dozily nursing...

reindeermum · 31/03/2009 20:41

Don't worry this is very normal. Try and express some milk first thing in the morning when your boobs are full, then give this to him in the evening. Also eat a good hot meal at lunch time AS WELL as a decent hot meal in the evening.

giantkatestacks · 31/03/2009 20:44

We also used breast shells to collect the letdown for the other side during the day, stored it in the fridge and fed that when the dcs were extra hungry and no amount of switching was doing the job.

DevilsAdvocaat · 31/03/2009 20:45

what are breast shells?

giantkatestacks · 31/03/2009 20:49

Are you getting some mental image of huge scallop type things? They are plastic things that fit into your bra while you're feeding and collect milk. You get them in the Avent expressing kit thing.

DevilsAdvocaat · 31/03/2009 20:56