I don't know where to start with 'fixing' our son, nor do I know what the key issue is, I think we've hit a perfect storm of Wonder Week/teething/4 month sleep regression and I'm at my wits' end, I've been in tears from sheer exhausted frustration twice already today.
Our boy is 19 weeks, 4 days, born naturally 6 days late at 7lb 12oz. He has been EBF since birth & feeds at 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm and 7.30pm after his bath/before bed. He has 2-3 naps per day, at night he sleeps beside me in a traditional crib, I'm also trying to get him to nap here too, rather than on me, as the moses basket we used to use downstairs is now too small. He'd been taking a single night feed at around 3am for aaaaaaages, then dropped it all by himself at exactly 16 weeks, then at 17-18 weeks everything began to fall apart!
Firstly, we had a stroppy period accompanied by red cheeks and dribbling which is when his nights began to get disrupted, Bonjela and cooled teething rings got us through, but the bump I can feel on his lower gum (near the BACK! WTF?) is still beneath the gum, not through it. However, the dribbling has dropped right off and his cheeks look normal again.
A few days later he started fussing at the breast, but only in the daytime! He gets to three minutes and cries/thrashes, he will 'suck suck, cry, suck suck, cry..' endlessly - so ends up not getting a full feed and my nipples become SO sore from all the faffing about. For the past few days this has happened at every single day feed, as a result hes been waking to feed every couple of hours at night to make it up. His bedtime feed and any night feeds work perfectly though - he just latches on and feeds normally, like his old self.
Yesterday I'd had enough and decided to see if he'd take expressed milk in the day - he does, so I did this all day, because I didn't want my day supply to dry up and thinking he'd sleep better if he had fed in the day. WRONG! He woke every single hour (I refused to feed him more than twice as he'd fed well on the bottle in the day, I comforted him back to sleep by stroking his head instead), I'm an emotional wreck today and he STILL won't feed at the breast, I've tried bringing him into a darkened, quiet bedroom for his 11am, but here I sit, having only fed him for three minutes, unable to convince him to continue.
Can anyone suggest what might be going on and how I can break this cycle of madness? Are the feeding and sleep issues connected, or is it coinsidence? Hubby has resorted to picking him up at night and getting him to sleep on him, but I really want to stop that before it becomes a habit, in case it makes little one's ability to sleep in his crib even worse.
Please help, I don't know what to do and my sleep-deprived brain can't come up with a rational solution!
(Supply-wise, I can express 60-70ml total across both sides per session in the day, but when I wake up in the morning I can manage a whopping 100-140ml from just one boob. He used to get sprayed by forceful letdown, but that hasn't happened for a while)