Low supply in evening

[bouldertc]

Hi mamas -

I have an 18 week old baby boy. He took about 8 weeks to figure out how to breastfeed, so I've been pumping a lot since day one to protect supply. Now we're doing much better with breastfeeding and things are pretty steady. I don't have low supply overall, but I think that I have very poor supply as the day goes on, and especially in the evening. I assume this is relatively normal since I hear of everyone having their best supply in the morning. Since Tracy suggests tanking up before bed, does anyone have any tips about this?

He is on an EAEASY routine -- feeding twice in each gap between naps in an effort to correct some reverse cycling we had going on. Effectively, he eats before and after each nap. He doesn't quite have set naptimes yet, but his first nap is usually about 2.5 hours and then he has two more 45 minute naps the rest of the day (we've tried endlessly to even these naps out, to no avail, so we're okay with this for now). Since his naps are short later in the day, he is eating more often. It bears noting that as the day goes on, his feeds get shorter, like less than 5 minutes per side sometimes. That, combined with the fact that I just make less milk later in the day means that it feels like he goes to bed hungry some nights. Occasionally we'll give him a bottle to make sure he's getting enough, and when we do, I'm unable to pump the amount he takes. For example, last night my husband gave him a 3.5 oz bottle and I was only able to pump 2.5 oz two hours after the baby took it. Also, he sometimes has green poo which I know is correlated with an foremilk/hindmilk imbalance, which is not surprising because I think he is very impatient. He's also very easily distracted right now. Also he's been vaguely teething for about a month now.

Here's today's EASY. He was fussy most of the day, so I fed him more frequently than I may have otherwise.

Wed Dec 2
Nightwaking 1: 1:50am-2:20am (breastfed)
Nightwaking 2: 4:30am-5am (breastfed)
Woke up: 7:10am
Ate: 8:30am
Nap 1: 9:20am-12:10pm (I had to wake him up; he had a rough time in the early part of the night and I'm assuming he had some catching up to do)
Ate: 12:15pm, 12:55pm
Nap 2: 2:10pm-2:45pm
Ate: 2:55pm, 3:45pm
Nap 3: 3:55pm-4:55pm
Ate: 5pm, 6:15pm, 7:15pm
Asleep: 7:25pm
Nightwaking: 8:15-8:45pm (breastfed)

Any tips? Thanks in advance for any help you're able to offer!

[becj86]

You might get better naps is you increase those A times by 10-15min. The first one seems pretty spot on at 2:10, then you drop to 2hr and get UT naps.

Anyway, wrt feeding, pretty normal to have reduced supply in the evening. You can help supply at that time by drinking plenty of water and having a rest in the afternoon.

Wrt. Imbalance, you can help with that by massaging the breast close to the chest wall to help dislodge the fats from the duct walls before a feed, that increases the fat content earlier in the feed. You can also try giving two feeds from one breast then swapping to the other, so say both 12:15 and 12:55 feeds would be from one breast - that should mean he sorts out his thirst initially then takes the fatter milk in the topup feed.