Breastfeeding 19 week old

[Carbis]

Breastfeeding my 19 week old feels like hard work at the moment. I’ve been sitting in a quiet room to feed for a while now as he gets so distracted. Now he fusses a loss, unlatches and then tries to get back on but in the wrong place and banging his head. He also seems to prefer blowing raspberries instead!

It sounds silly as he is only little but it’s starting to feel like a battle every time. I’m starting to feel a bit like giving up and switching to formula. I wasn’t planning to do that until after we started weaning because I’ve read that breastfeeding helps their digestive system.

Am I doing something wrong? Is this just a phase?

We had this so badly! My DS is coming up to 8 months now. He is on solids and some formula now as well as breastfeeding, but I breastfed exclusively until 6 months and the last 2 months were a bit of a chore tbh.

Kellymom has a helpful article called The Distractible Baby. My tip as well as what is there would be to try feeding straight after a walk in the sling if you use one. Fresh air plus proximity to boobs seemed to remind my DS that he did still like milk after all

Another thing that helped me was weighing DS and seeing that actually, despite all the fussing and seemingly only being on the boob for a short amount of time, he was gaining weight and following his curve on the growth chart.

As I mentioned, he does have some bottle feeds now and we do paced/responsive feeding. To be honest, he can be just as distractible on the bottle so switching to formula might not be the answer...

My little girl is 20 weeks and she was like this a couple of weeks ago and honestly it was stressing me out. But now it has pretty much stopped and she’s back to feeding very well again. I was still thinking of her like a newborn I think and expecting her to be hungry again after 2 hours and so when she whinged a little, I presumed it was hunger and tried to feed, resulting in fussiness, back arching, crying etc and then I would be stressed and so would she! Anyway, I then stopped trying to jump on every little thing as hunger, and waited until I knew for sure, sometimes 4 hours later, and then she would feed perfectly. Now she’ll sometimes go 4 hours or sometimes 2 hours but I’m just really trying to listen to her and it seems to be working.
I don’t know if that helps at all!

Mine is 8 1/2 months and was exactly the same. He might be getting more efficient at feeding now and therefore quicker and wanting to focus on other things instead. Sounds like you're doing all of the right things. If you want to stop bfing it's completely your choice, but maybe give it a few weeks and you'll hopefully find a new rhythm.

Thanks for your replies. It’s probably a combination of the things you’ve described - him not being hungry or filling up quickly. I’ve weighed him and he is still tracking along to curve so that’s reassuring as he does look a bit leaner than other babies his age.