Hi everyone I'm back again with a new issue.
Before I start I just wanted to say that soon we will be coming up on 3mths of EBF! I seriously didn't think we'd make it past 6 weeks and here we are half way already:)
DD had been feeding great (still with nipple shields) for around 15min a feed till 4 days ago.
Her day feeds suddenly shortened to 5-6min a time although night feeds remained at 15-20min. After a whole day of these strange feeds I gave her a bottle at her bedtime feed to see how long she needed to finish it. She has only been getting 1 bottle a day at the DF, the medela calma bottle so she needs to suck quite hard to get milk out. Anyway, it took her around 8min to finish a 130ml bottle (maybe proof that she only needs the same amount of time for BF??)
Her odd nursing continued the next day so I thought "uh oh nursing strike incoming" and proceeded to take the same steps that helped us out of the last nursing strike, no bottles, co-sleeping, feeding relaxed etc etc.
It's been 2 days of "nursing strike intervention" and I don't see much of a difference. She still feeds an average of 5min during the day and then comes off the breast. If I try get her to take more she will start crying and sometimes after I calm her down she will take a bit more from the other side.
I even tried to give her the bottle today to see if she would take that, but she spat it out. When I put my finger near her mouth she opens wide and starts sucking on it violently. This is what leads me to believe she may still be hungry. I can also hear her tummy rumbling later (digestion or hunger, I don't know).
Yesterday after a whole day of 5 min feeds she fed for 30min at bedtime and 20min per feed at the 2 NFs (still afraid to reintroduce the bottle DF).
I have been trying to feed her at every little hint that she may be hungry but I'm worried that I'm creating a snacker. The strange thing is that if there is a 1.5h break between feeds or a 3h break, she still eats for 5 min.
We took her in to see a pedi in case she was ill or refluxing and therefore refusing to feed but the dr was no help at all and told me that I should be able to tell if my baby is hungry or not and otherwise she is healthy.
Unfortunately I can't tell if she is still hungry:( Her irritated cry has the same coughing start as her hungry cry, she smacks her lips and sucks on her fist all the time, not only when hungry.
My question is, is it at all possible that she is getting enough at these short feeds and I'm fussing about nothing?
