Author Topic: EBF 3.5 month old desperate mommy  (Read 1556 times)

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Offline Redandblack_uk

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EBF 3.5 month old desperate mommy
« on: August 23, 2017, 18:01:02 pm »
This is my first post here. My little girl has been baby led/ on demand everything since birth. She is now 15 weeks old. My little girl has never slept for longer than 3 hours and most of the time it's 1-2 hourly. She has no fixed pattern to her feeds and sometimes it's every 2 hours sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. She wakes at 5ish every morning and will not go back to sleep even though she is really tired. She tries so hard to go back to sleep but even with a feed she can't do it. If this was her natural wake up time and she felt good and well rested I would be fine with it. But she is yawning all morning, grizzly and over tired most of the time. Today she slept for 4 1/2 hours in naps, awake no longer than 2 hours as I got her to take good naps in the sling, and was still exhausted and over tired at bedtime which I tried at 5.30. She went to sleep at 6.30 after a lot of crying and a feed.  I'm at my wits end. I can't sleep train her with pupd while she is this chronically over tired. It's just not feasible. I have done schedules for her day and it just doesn't work. She still wakes at 5 and desperately tries to get back to sleep but can't. I think she does well when she has about 5 hours naps in the day but that means she should be sleeping about 10 hours at night, so a 6 o'clock bedtime for a 5 o'clock start factoring in.about an hour for wake ups in the night. Tried that today and still she was over tired. I'm at a loss. I have tried an earlier bedtime but she woke up in the middle of the night for 2 hours. Someone please help I don't know where to start!!!! I was wondering if sort of scheduling her feeds might provide a bit of structure and help her sleep longer periods at night. She tends to feed to sleep sometimes and then continue to snack throughout and between sleep cycles. She doesn't have to feed to sleep as sometimes I rock or bounce her or daddy does. Over night she tends to wake, feed for 5/10 minutes and go back to sleep. I did have an overactive letdown. Last few days it's felt like my supply has gone down as she is frustrated and seems to want to feed more. Also she rejects the left boob a lot. I'm so confused I don't know what I'm doing.

Offline *Ali*

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Re: EBF 3.5 month old desperate mommy
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2017, 22:37:35 pm »
She's probably going through the 4mo growth spurt which is why you're feeling like your supply isn't keeping up.  Now would be a bad time to do anything about the frequent feeds as she's deliberately sending your body a message to make more milk.  It's also normal to not feel full by this stage of feeding as the hormones that causes you to make all that milk in the early months have settled down now and milk is made more on demand rather than in advance and then stored til needed.

You could try switching the rocking and bouncing to shush pat as that is easier to continue once you transfer to the bed and also easier to gradually reduce.

Regarding rejection of the left boob, have you tried tricking her by holding her in a football hold under your left arm so she's on the side she usually lays on to feed from the right breast? Occasionally a side preference can be indicative of an ear infection which causes pain when lying on that side.  So just keep an eye out for any other symptoms.
Cadan Dec 2009 and Colby Aug 2011