Low Milk Supply in Afternoon and Evening ...Tiktok ???!!!!

[lovinit]

Would it make sense for me to use a formula feed at 5-6pm and then express for the 10pm feed once milk supply has built up ?

Also, DD2 is 4wks and seems to only take 10-15 mins for day feeds and night feeds. Is this OK ? She never sucks for longer unless it is to soothe in the eraly morning. I guess that I am hopign Tiktok is here to answer this !

Hi there, hoping that somebody can help me with some advice as I have got into a real downward spiral here. My ds is 10 weeks old and was very unsettled and colicky for ages. My health visitor told me it was because I wasnt eating enough and was too tired to produce good quality milk so suggested I supplement with formula which I have been doing now for about 6 weeks - but its getting harder to breastfeed as the supply is being reduced because its not stimulated anough. I have been taking Fenugreek tablets to try to improve the milk supply and trying to feed ds at least at the start of a feed and through the night but I am still having to give him formula too - should I just ditch the formula and go back to sole breastfeeding or would this not work now? (I am a secondtime mum and breastfed for 5 months without any problems last time around but ds had feeding problems and is alot harder to handle!).

the advice is usually to give up bottles and spend a few days in bed with baby doing nothin but breastfeeding and cuddling - that is supposed to increase supply.

The more often you feed the more the supply is stimulated.

You could take it a bit more slowly and gradually reduce the formula and feed more often. You should be able to build the supply up again over a week or two - but it will take determination - and may be hard to do if you are looking after your other child without help.

i've really appreciated your advice too tiktok, and all the posts on mumsnet. i'm BF my second too and finding it hard!!!

And DH says i deserve a medal because i've been doing it for 3 weeks and it would so much easier to give up, since DD1 was bottlefeed.

Just to re-enforce just how good tiktoks advice is - and to say that it really does get better.

A few weeks ago I was going thro the 'I don't have enough milk' phase, and I was advised to top up with a formula feed by hv too. Which we did, just once a day. But after a few teething problems (and a lot of trial and error) everything has settled down. In the last week haven't used any formula and feeling more confident.

But those first 6 weeks were really hard with lots of little feeds. And lots of rubbish advice from lots of different people. The first few days in hospital with strangers hands pushing my boobs into dd's face, and other people fretting about my milk supply, totally knocked my confidence. But mostly thanks to dh I stuck with it. Hv still frets about my diet telling me to drink lots of full fat milk etc but I now have the confidence to pick and choose which advice I will follow.

I must admit that I do express once a day still so that she doesn't loose the will to take a bottle, and to give daddy the opportunity to feed her too (he's going to be a stay-at-home-dad in a couple of months time so I feel thats important).

Oh Minkyjj, your hv is totally ignorant and stupid. She really is. That's just crap about hte food and rest. Providing you aren't starving your milk is fine (I assume you aren't actually starving to death here ).
My advice is to ditch as much of the formula as you can bear to. ie say to yourself, between 11am and 9pm (or 6pm if you aren't that brave yet )I won't supplement at all, then supplement at the latest feed. Your baby will suck all day and maybe cry a bit and you will feel awful, but the sucking all day has magical effects. In a couple of days you will actually be able to see how much more milk you are making - you will be out of the downward spiral and into an upward one and it will be exciting. Your body can make milk - fantastic, wonderful milk - you have to trust it.
Also, stay away from the HV. Look at your baby. Is he weeing? pooing? Does he seem well and alert? After two days or so of constant feeding (and it probably will be constant, I'm afraid) can you see that you have more milk? Then you are doing fine. Your HV isn't any good at her job, and she knows nothing, zilch, zero about breastfeeding so seeing her is doing you harm so really, don't go to the clinic and don't tell her what you are doing. Keep posting!

Minky, what your hv has told you is really extremely unprofessional and ignorant.

You could take bucket-loads of fenugreek, stay all day in bed, and stuff your face with food....and it would not work to boost your milk supply one little bit if you are giving formula, which as you have foound reduces the milk made.

Rest and diet really have no effect on breastmilk supply.

As well as following the advice here, talk to someone on one of the bf helplines, and ask them about building up and maintaining your milk supply. You don't say how much formula you are giving - it may take time to decrease it, while you build your milk up.

at the ignorance of HVs.

And the notion that you have to eat in a special way to produce 'good quality milk' is just utter crap.

drink fennel tea excellent for milk supply

i see lots of threads with people worring about their milk supply -i never seemed to heve a massive supply of milk (i didnt leak during the day) found it difficult to express ) yet i have sucessfully bf two children weaned at six months and beyond
hvs are def. not always experts on breast feeding and i thing that probably quite often our milk supply is adequate and the best thing to do is to keep feeding not give bottles if at all possible as this will decrease the supply further

Lovinit - that night went a bit pearshaped and she ended up feeding from me for a couple of hours. However, I decided to try and get some nap routine sorted out and yesterday was brilliant. She napped in her crib, had the appropriate wake-time and come bedtime she fed, settled awake in her crib and never woke to cluster feed. I read on the information sheet that it could be due to overtiredness so I reckoned that could be the problem and last night because she was being put to bed when she was tired and not overtired it seemed to work - I have learnt from her that when she is tired she wants to feed (she sucks her fist and makes the mouth moves but isn't actually hungry) so I have taken it that she wants to use me for comfort to get herself to sleep if she has gone past her 'natural sleepy time'. It's all a big learning curve and I'm going to see how she gets on with her 'kind of' routine but after just one day there is a big change. Nightime however is a different matter - last night when she woke for her night feeds I couldn't for the love of money get her back into her crib so she slept next to me in our bed. I feel very uncomfortable doing this (worried about SiDS) but we both slept well so I suppose I need to just go with the flow on that one.

Glad you found yesterday evening easier, larlylou

If it doesn't happen again, don't worry about it!

Read about safe co-sleeping on the UNICEF Baby Friendly website

here

"have stayed pretty clear of meausuring with dd2 as well, she is a real snacker and feeds very regularly, but is happy., energetic and alert and is steadily growing out of her clothes. "

oooohhh, sound like my dd too. but with the measuring bit, when you are married to a civil engineer, he wants the numbers.

Minkyjj - have you tried the Sheila Kitzinger method for increasing supply - basically you and baby go to bed for 24 hours, and every time the baby shows the slightest interest in having something you feed it. I think the theory is that if you're in bed you're not going to delay a feed because of finishing something else first - you're just on hand. I'll have a look and see if I can find some more details.

larlylou: my dd used to do that feed, feed, feed if overtired. what broke it when it happened at night was to swaddle her tightly put her at arm's length and put a dummy in, holding it in. It took about 20 mins for her to drop off to sleep. Watch it too as it is easy to forget that she is feeding like that because of overtiredness, when you suspect it stop and give a dummy.

(If worried about using a dummy, so far, dd is 14 wks old and only wants a dummy when tired. What I did was as soon as she went into a proper sleep (when the body/limbs go limp and heavy) gently remove dummy. Now she spits it out herself and doesn't wake looking for it.

Fingers crossed that it lasts.)

Can anybody please explain to be the benefits of taking brewers yeast and what It supposedly does to my milk.
A BF councillor plus my HV recommended I took brewers yeast daily. one explained that it increased my milk supply and the other explained it improves the quality of my milk. Iv been taking one 300mg tablet each day and to be honest, Iv not noticed any difference. Obviously if it improves the quality im not going to notice
If it is as beneficial as iv been told, am i taking enough of it?
Thanx for any help.

No good evidence it does anything, but it does have a reputation for improving quantity of milk.....probably a myth.

just thought id add that i co slept with my children to breastfeed at night dont think i could have done all those night feeds without it !

Thanks for all the advice - I think I will just bite the bullet and give it my best shot this weekend while DH is at home to help with dd. I guess the key with it is to just think that breastfeeding is the only importnat thing to focus on for a few days until my supply gets back to full levels. At the moment I manage to feed ds all night with no formula supplementing so its just the daytime I need to build up again. I recon I have to try to lose about 4 bottles of 4 fluid oz of formula. But knowing that its possible will certainly give me the will to keep trying. Ds is a good healthy size so it wont be a worry if he doesnt get as much as he wants for a couple of days.

tiktok - I am wondering if perhaps my dd suffers from silent reflux which would be what we originally thought was colic then overtiredness added to that the aversion to lie on her back. When I feed (I do think I have a fast milk flow - when she comes off my milk squirts all over the place) - she has to gulp hard to keep up with it, sometimes she comes off the boob with a scream and is reluctant to latch back on, she gags and coughs, has hiccups after every feed, she suffers from dreadful wind (her poohs quite often look like homemade pesto!) and screams when trying to pass wind/pooh, hates...loathes being on her back but will settle quite happily sitting upright - I thought part of it was because I wasn't producing enough milk at one point (of which I have since learnt from here any observing that isn't the case). I am sure she suffers from silent reflux mildly, could this be the case? If yes, do you have any suggestions? I don't trust speaking to my HV about it as I don't agree with some of her suggestions.

larlylou, I have no idea about silent reflux. My own feeling is that reflux, silent and non-silent, is over-diagnosed by doctors who do not understand how to help mothers bf more happily (I am not saying it does not exist).

You may have a very generous milk supply and an active let down, which is easily managed by feeding your baby on one side only, and only using each breast every few hours - that is,to return to the same breast again and again.

This reduces the supply without reducing the amount of milk available to the baby, and allows the baby to have proportionaly more creamy milk.

You need to try it for two to three days before you know if it is going to help.

Gentle hand expressing on the unused side might be needed, in the short term.

This really does help - not everyone, but many!

I have to say that I am now also feelign sceptical abt the diagnosis of reflux for DD ... I think that all the grunting in the 4-7am time slot is PREHAPs due to heer trying to wake up as that is what her body clock is doing .... I am ggoing to continue with the medication for a few more days though just to try it out ....

Larylou, well done on the other night. I am having some tough ones (last 3 weeks!) where from 4-7am DD does not want to stay asleep ...

Problem, I now know is that she thinks night is day and so feeds so much more efficiently during nighttime and nott in am. For her 1st thing in am feed she is disinterested since she has had so much during the night. She is pretty much doing 3 hourly till 4am then its wakey wakey ... Last nightt, I resisted feeding her again after 4am as at almost 6 weeks, I really think she has to learn to cut out night feeding and to encourage more during the day. Mind you, let down and flow is sooo much better during the nights that my body must also change to accomadate her as well (or rather vice versa ?!)

Any tips on helping DD switich body clock round ???

Tiktok - so, I feed for say 3 or 4 feeds on one side, expressing from the other (as my boobs get engorged really quickly so I'd need to) then switch to the other side and feed exclusively from that side for the next 3 or 4 feeds and do this for a few days to see if there is any difference. Does it make any difference the positioning of the baby when feeding? I try and get her as upright as possible when feeding so she isn't lying down as she chokes a bit more this way.

Lovinit - I don't know if you do this already, but for me it helps if I follow a daily bedtime routine (not that it helps her settle in her crib as she always wants to be upright) - every night she has a bath then a quiet feed in our bedroom with the lights dimmed, winding session then to bed (only to be up again and sleeping either on our shoulder or in the bouncy chair upright). During the night I keep everything low (lights, hardly any talking) and I find changing her nappy before I feed helps her settle otherwise it wakes her up if I do it between or after feeds. Last night she wouldn't sleep lying down at all so I'm feeling a little jaded today!). Sorry I can't be of anymore help....do you try and fit in loads of feeds during the day so she doesn't need so much at night perhaps? Not sure if that is right advice or not but my HV told me to do this (never know whether their info is appropriate or not these days).

Lovinit - Solve your Childs Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber has a section on night-day reversal.

Larly, that's right, though you may not need to have 3-4 feeds on the trot from the same breast; try 2-3 and see how it goes.

lovinit, I still think 'going with the flow' and accepting that for her, waking between 4 and 7, or rather feeding at 4, napping and then feeding at 6 again, is a normal pattern, is going to be easier than trying to diagnose it as a problem and trying to change it. There is nothing wrong with it; she is less than six weeks old, and she will do all sorts of things differently over the next weeks and months.

Resisting feeding her at 4 am sounds like hard work....where have you got the idea she needs to drop night feeds at this age?
Of course it's up to you, but for the last 3 weeks you say these nights/early mornings have been tough and nothing you have done has changed them, so just letting her wake and feed when she wants to sounds a lot easier to me

THanks Tiktok, I will start this and see how it goes. We have been cluster feeding again tonight which I think is due to her being overtired so I'm off to soothe a tired little lady who needs cuddles and sleep!

Hope things go ok, larlylou...but she may simply be cluster feeding because that's what babies do. I think we give ourselves headaches trying to work out why our babies do one thing and not another