Baby suddenly MUCH harder at 9/10 weeks

[Dalmatian0]

DD is currently 10.5 weeks. Until 9 weeks she was so easy, I knew I was lucky. Calm, slept a lot, smiley. Exclusive BF, albeit with regular pumping (as latch not great and DD tiny at birth), which worked well for us.

The last 10 days, so weeks 9 and 10, it’s like my milk supply has dropped off a cliff, or the amount she needs has increased, or both. I’m now pumping more than 4 hours a day and barely keeping up. Her scream when she is hungry is SO stressful. I used to have excess milk in the fridge, now as soon as I’ve pumped I have to give it straight to her. I’m scared to go out as she may start howling and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I was out earlier in the week and she screamed so much. I can’t go to my yoga class anymore because DH can no longer feed her if I’m out ;as no milk in the fridge).

Her weight gain is fine and she looks very healthy. I think she’s getting what she needs but only JUST, and I’m hardly able to do anything apart from feeding and pumping.

I’ve been trying everything, nothing has worked yet. I know stress is bad so trying to stay calm but it is hard. Been prescribed Domperidone but it hasn’t done anything yet (only started taking it yesterday to be fair).

Does anyone have any advice? Keen to avoid formula if I can but may have to give up on that. I would be so grateful for advice / handhold / hearing from anyone who can relate.

Has her latch improved? If so I'd just feed her and let her ramp up your supply as she'll be much better at it than a pump. Mine never took a bottle so for the first nine months they were always with me. Knowing I couldn't leave them took the pressure off weirdly. After that they'd have water and a yoghurt if I was out for an hour or so.

Also they do tend to wake up a lot as this point, which does lead to a lot of tetchiness in my experience...

Thanks for your reply. I think as she has got used to bottles of expressed milk she gets bored / frustrated on the breast as it’s harder work. I would love for proper BF to work well for us but not sure that it will. I had so many apps with the infant feeding team and spoken to La Leche too early on, but what made a difference was pumping. But now I get so little when I pump and she needs so much more, I’m not sure how sustainable it is!

Maybe not what you wanted to hear but (apart from the first few weeks) I could never get much milk out by pumping although I had a good supply and bf exclusively. I don’t feel it would have been sustainable for me if I relied on pumping to feed baby, and I hear this quite a lot from others too. I actually had more success hand expressing than using a pump. Have you tried other methods/different pumps? Can you try bf while she’s not super hungry at first to get her more used to it?