On/off breast refusal

[lollystar]

My daughter is 8 weeks tomorrow, for the past few days i've been having trouble feeding her in the evening - anytime between 5pm and 11pm. I know she's hungry but she refuses to latch on, and works herself into such a state that she screams the house down. This can go on for half an hour or so, and i've been in tears over it. I'm desperate to feed her, but obviously I can't make her latch on.

A friend told me that this is something they do every 3 months or so to kickstart your body into making more milk. Is this true? Has anyone else got any experience with this type of problem? It doesn't happen everyday - today she's been feeding fine. I was wondering if it was overstimulation - my husband and elder daughter are back from work/school, or maybe I'm missing the hunger cues as I'm busy doing other stuff, and she gets a bit too hungry to wait??

No, I seem to remember this with DS although it hasn't happened with DD. I do look back at the cluster feeding and think, well why didn't you just sit and feed him then? But now I remember that this was why!
IIRC the only thing that helped was distractio, DH used to wrap him in a blanket and take him round the garden, which might be possible now it's warmer. Or taking him into a different room or dancing to loud music. After half an hour or so of this he was a bit more tired and willing to finally settle for a feed.
Did you have this with your DD?

no, didn't have it with the first one. I didn't breastfeed very well at all actually and gave up after 9 weeks with her. I really want it to work out this time round as I can see what I was doing wrong last time. Then this refusal started and it's thrown me!
I try with the distraction - wrap her up and have a dance or rock her - sometimes it works, other times it just makes her more annoyed.

give her a bath? ds used to fuss about between 4 and 8, getting worse and worse, but then i discovered a bath and a massage* (not a long one early on) at 5 ish - the minute the fussing started - quite early actually, relaxed him to have a good feed then fall asleep. he was in bed for the night by 6ish but i found then he didn't get overtired/stimulated and have a total meltdown. One night he went bananas and couldn't calm himself down at all, and we had to hold a dummy in his mouth to calm him, in a dark room - it was a nightmare, and i had no idea what to do!! he still goes to bed at 6ish at 5 months .

*some babies do get overstmulated by a bath apparently, but you have to just see what works. you could try going all atmospheric on him - low voices, dim lights, a bit low-key?

My dd used to do this too, at around the same age. If we could get her to take a dummy, then once she started sucking on that and calmed down, we could quickly make the switch between the dummy and the breast and get her to feed. It was a passing phase and she did grow out of it - but it was confusing and not fun while it lasted!

I have posted about breast refusal as well today. My 14 week old is getting really hard to feed. She was awful this afternoon and this evening. I just know she's hungry but she makes such a fuss. I did manage to get her to feed eventually by standing up and bobbing lots but the whole process takes about an hour which is not ideal when you have an older toddler! I think it's all related to how tired she is. Once she eventually starts feeding, it's then a struggle to keep her awake enough to have a good feed. I'm hoping it's just a phase.

sounds strange but have you tried putting the hoover on in the background? discovered this by accident with DD and is a great way to get DH to do some housework!!

my baby had the tongue tie op yesterday and now he won't even try to latch on..i gave in and gave him a NUK bottle..

has anyone else had this experience, they said it should get better but he is actually worse at breastfeeding now!

Not had any experience with tongue tie Wabbe, sorry.

Thanks for the replies everyone. She's still having the occassional screaming sessions, but I'm a lot calmer about it now. I just have to persevere for a few minutes and she realises all of a sudden that there's boob on offer!