The latest in my breastfeeding sob story...
DD2 is 3 months old and generally feeds every 2 hours, sometimes more frequently, day and night. According to my hospital's lactation consultant I have oversupply issues which is why I have had a couple of bouts of mastitis and in the early days DD2 used to like to clamp down on the boob and was always very fussy and overwhelmed during feeding. She starts crying and yelping a few minutes in and seems to continue to sob during 70% of day feeds (at night she's quite and content and too sleepy to make a noise).
After doing a couple of weeks of block feeding, and using several heads of cabbage, my supply seems to have settled and we're back on one breast per feed feeds. But she still feeds soooo frequently and last night after she fed at 1.30, 2.30, 3.30, 5 and 6 I was at my wits end and took myself off to my local baby clinic (staffed by health visitors).
First of all the HV weighs DD2 and she is 7.4 kg which means she's on like the 110% or something - basically off the scale - of those damn charts, having been born on the 75%. The health visitor asked about DD2s feeding habits and general digsetive behaviour (lots of hiccuping, being congested, farty, grunting and groaning at night etc) and then says she thinks DD2 has 'silent reflux' - which is apparently when the acid goes half way up the oesophogus (sp?) so it doesn't cause much vomiting like usual reflux, but can cause excessive breastfeeding (is there such a thing?) as the baby uses nursing to soothe the pain and hence becomes a big fat porker.
The HV said this was only a hunch and I should go to my GP to see what she thinks (have made appoint for Sat) but was just wondering what you wise ladies thought. Frankly am not holding out much hope that the GP will have any clue what's going on. I also spoke to the hospital lac consultant on the phone today and she said she didn't know anything about silent reflux and thought it still sounded like an oversupply/ forceful let down issue. I'm still not sure if this is the case because I never spray milk on DD2 when she comes off the boob or have soggy breastpads etc.
I'm obviously really distraught that all this time DD2 may have been in real pain and the thought of having to give her some kind of antacid or a stronger medicine worries me. But she is soooo unhappy while feeding there's got to be something going on, don't you think?
Thanks for reading if you've got this far.