Breastfeeding and unable to settle LO during the day.

[annette1975]

Hi everyone

Having some real problems throughout the day with Madison - she only seems to be happy when she's feeding, for the last week or so she really seems to have found her voice and uses it. She usually wakes around 7am - 8am and I feed her (from both sides) and if I'm lucky she'll go back to sleep for another hour or so but only if she's next to me in bed. From then on she will want to feed almost constantly and if I try to do anything - bath her, change her, get her dressed - anything basically she starts to scream, I spoke to the health visitor about this last week as I was worried about my milk supply latch etc as I had mastitis the week before but she's happy with her weight gain - almost an ounce a day and she has plenty of wet and dirty nappies so put it down to comfort feeding and she told me to try and space out the feeds leaving at least 2 hours between them and try giving her cooled boiled water inbetween feeds if necessary - tried this for a day before logging onto breastfeeding support website who said it was probably a growth spurt and things should calm down again in a week or so and not to give her water. So for the last week I have fed and fed and fedand things seem to have got worse - she will not tolerate being put down now at all, the only way I get myself a break is to put her in her pushchair and go for a walk but we have to go through a screaming session to get her in there and as soon as we get home she's awake and wanting to eat again. This process lasts all day and she eventually flakes out (whilst feeding) about 10pm but will not go in her moses basket at all and is now in bed with us where she will sleeps for 2-3 hours inbetween feeds and falls straight back off to sleep until it all starts again the next day.

I hate not being able to comfort her without feeding and she will not settle for anyone else whatsoever, right now she has flaked out on my left arm (while feeding) and am typing this one handed as I know when I put her down she'll be awake in minutes and it all starts again.

Please any ideas, help will be greatly appreciated.

Annette

 

[KJ]

hiya, I really feel for you, it sounds exhausting.

Unfortunately what your LO has learnt to do now is snack. She probaby only takes a little milk at each feed and the rest of the time is comfort sucking. So if you try to space out her feeds she'll def be upset cause she's not taking enough milk to sustain her for any amount of time.

But in order for her to go longer you'll have to eek the time out a bit so that she gradually takes more at each feed. If she's hungrier then she'll feed better when she's allowed the breast. Just try spacing them out for maybe 5 mins longer each day, then you only have to cope with 5 mins of screaming at a time.

Hopefully after a while she'll be having less feeds but taking more milk at each one if that makes sense!!

I find is Ash fiddles about for a feed, he'll not last as long and be grumpy. But if I make him wait, he realises that he has to feed properly when he gets the chance.

K.xxx

 

[Lola's Mummy]

Lola was sort of like this she would feed all the time but she would take too much milk and make herself sick, then she'd want feeding again so I gave her a dummy.

I know a lot of people don't agree with dummies but I didn't know what else to do and I didn't like then fact that she was making herself sick by taking too much milk.

She had the dummy a lot at first. I would let her feed for as long as she wanted then if she was sick I would try and settle her with the dummy 9 times out of 10 it would work.

Now she only has 7/8 feeds a day and has the dummy for naps and when she goes to bed. I'm not saying this is what you should do but it's what worked for me

Hope it gets better soon