Poor latch, overactive letdown or coincidence? Please advise.

[OhToBeAYummyMummy]

Hi,

I have a beautiful new daughter who will be 3 weeks old tomorrow. I am exclusively breastfeeding. She is really suffering with wind, you can hear it gurgling around in her tummy and she has been having green nappies and passing loads of wind. I wind her after each feed and usually get 1 or 2 good burps up yet she is still uncomfortable, groaning and squirming whilst feeding and I have been unable to get her to settle to sleep lying flat in past 48 hours as she seems to be more uncomfortable on her back and will squirm and groan every few minutes before waking up crying.

After some research on the Internet I found information about overactive let down (googled green poo, wind etc) she does seem to tick some of the boxes with regard to this. I have noticed if she comes off during letdown the milk is spraying out not dripping, would this indicate too fast a letdown? She makes a funny clicking/smacking noise at different times during a feed, and her latch doesn't seem as strong when she is making the noise. In general her latch seems fine, lips turned out and my nipples are no longer sore but is this clicking/smacking noise her taking air in?

If it is overactive let down has anyone tried block feeding at this early stage? I'm worried it might affect my supply too much and I'll end up not having enough to feed her.

Sorry for rambling, am quite sleep deprived. If anyone has any ideas I'd aprecciate it as I hate her being uncomfortable.

My daughter did this 'lip-smacking' when she was younger. She too used to take in lots of air when she broke suction, and she still does it occaisonally. Like your daughter it results in lots of trapped wind that burping just couldn't solve. She would do loads of farts too and you could just hear all the bubbles stuck in her system. i don't know about green poo though, she never had that.

To be honest, I treated it a bit like colic, using Infacol before feeds. when she was uncomfortable I'd massage her tummy clockwise and alternate that with bringing her knees up to her tummy to encourage her to expel the bubbles the other end - the results would be entertaining if she wasn't in so much distress.

I have the spraying too, but I think thats more to do with the amazing amount of vacuum they generate combined with the let down. If you think the let down s too strong you can always express a little until it slows and then put her on. It does get better as they get older and everything settles down.

Thank you so much for replying, will give the infacol and massage a go. Good to know things settled for your daughter. It's sometimes hard in the sleep deprived haze to remember that things change quickly at this stage and that there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Some other things that worked for me (similar issue with over active let down) are feeding lying down and sort of sitting up my DS so that the nipple is pointing upwards so he has to suck against gravity, if you see what I mean. I found some useful ideas on how to cope on the Kellymom website.

Its always easier for DS when he feeds when he is sleepy as well as I think they don't suck so hard.

Agree that massaging tummy and pumping legs can also help relieve the wind.

BTW, feeding lying down is supposed to be a separate idea from the sitting up technique - it sounds from re-reading my post that I meant both at the same time which would be a bit tricky!

Thanks for that preggers, I've had a look at the kellymom website and it has some great ideas. I'll give the different feeding positions a go too. Hopefully something will work and I'll have a more comfortable baby very soon.