Big hungry baby!

Help! I can't keep up with my baby!

He is a big boy and always hungry!   We are still feeding 3 hourly during the day and 4 hourly over night, but I know he can go 6-7 hours without feeding. He just doesn't want to.

My milk supply is ok during the day and he usually goes off to sleep ok.    He has a morning sleep at about 9:30-10AM, for about 2 hours and then an afternoon sleep at about 1PM for 2 hours and then sometimes he will have one more sleep between then and bedtime.

My milk supply is drastically decreasing at about 9PM which is when he usually settles for the night.   I feed him and afterwards he is still frantically searching for boob and just won't settle until he is full and I don't have the goods to fill him up at this time.

Last night was so bad I gave him a few teaspoons of pureed apple and he crashed out in his bouncer. (I had no milk whatsoever left) This was about 10PM. I transferred him to bed and he woke at 1AM starving again.   He was then fed and put back to bed. He was not happy again, and seemed to be still hungry, but he must have been more tired than hungry so went back to sleep until 4AM.     Fed again and then continued to cry on and off on the boob until 7AM until he finally went back to sleep.

Formula is not an option anymore.   We have tried three different ones, and different bottles and each one is refused.   I can't force him to drink it and the screaming we get from that is worse than the hungry screams.   Even if I get 5mls into him, he power chucks violently about three times a few hours later so I think he's intolerant to the general formulas. I know nothing about goats formula, soy formula or any of the others, all I know about them is the price of them is a lot more and I can't justify that cost if it's not going to work.

The lack of sleep thing is fine. I am ok with him waking up hungry, and will happily feed him I just wish I had enough milk to get him back to sleep.

I've been doing everything I can think of to boost my supply to keep up with him, because it's really the only option I have.   He is four months so we have started to give him a wee bit of solids, but I don't want to overfeed him solids to compensate for lack of milk as him getting everything he needs from my milk is more important.

Any ideas?    TIA, I'm going crrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzy!

((hugs)) its so hard when baby is demanding and you feel like you are giving your everything and its still not quite cutting it. But I wanted to let you know that we had a MASSIVE growth spurt at around 4mths, honestly I thought I was going to go mad!!!

DS was so so soooooooo hungry all of a sudden, feeding so often and for ages and really stroppy if he didnt ge full enough. I contemplated formula and solids and all sorts but in the end it was 'just' a growth spurt and the extra demand he made of the 'girls' meant they did up their production and within a couple of weeks he was back to being happy with the supply.

You could be in the same situation by the sounds???

My advice would be to look after yourself, get lots of rest, eat and drink well and continue with the demand feeding, offer both sides every feed and your supply should increase... boobie juice is the ultimate supply and demand process and it sounds like your hungry wee guy is trying to tell your 'girls' to crank up production a notch or two which is totally normal at around the 16 / 18 week mark.

HTH xx

I wish I could, but I have an extremely full-on three year old too.     Have been trying to improvise on that idea though, just in the lounge so I can keep an eye on my older child.

Thanks everyone!

Kiwikid, I feel much better reading your post, I think it might be a huge growth spurt because usually even though he isn't a great sleeper, he's a good feeder.

Sorry, have got soy and AR formula, not goats, but you're still welcome to them.

I am not sure if this will help, but I used to express off an extra feed in the morning and give that to DD last thing at night at around 9-10pm. I did this because my milk was so much creamier and better quality in the morning than what I could offer her in evening. I also demand fed her from 5pm till 9pm, which was pretty mch hourly, firstly to increase milk production and secondly because it would almost fill her up and then I would give her that last bottle of EBM just before bed or use it as a dreamfeed just to finish her off for the night.

My DD also refused bottles to start with. I then decided to introduce the bottle as a toy. I filled it with water and put it down on her play mat every time I put her on the floor. Didn't take her long to accept the bottle and realise it might actually be worth drinking whatever was in it!

I b/f her till 8 months exclusively except for that last evening feed when I felt my milk supply/quality was not up to it.

Best of luck, I know how stressful it can be!!

nothing much to add, just that we are going through the same thing and just about hopefully ( fingers crosssed) coming out the other end!

I found eat heaps of protein, for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea dinner. I ate heaps especially eggs, baked beans, cheese, tuna. This helped heaps and increased my supply. Snack on protein too, like nuts.
it will pass! we were told to do soilds too, but will wait a bit longer and see.

Good luck, you are not alone

My supply and demand feature never seemed to work properly LOL. Another option is domperidone. I've been on it since I went back to work so that I could express enough to keep Ryan fully BF while at DC 4 hours a day. Looking back, I should have gone on the medicine sooner.

It's just another option to consider. It gave me stomach cramps for 2 days but settled straight away after that.

First of all hugs.

I think bubs is generally going through a growthspurt that seems to be lasting a bit longer at that stage. Had it with both my kids. I think it coincides with them needing a bit more energy as they are moving now and a bit more active and not just sleeping.

By the sounds of it you dont want to go formula and it seems he is geniune thirsty and hungry.

My advice is make sure you get enough sleep. Drink a lot of water or some apple juice if you dont like water. Then eat oats for breakfast with some brewers yeast thrown on top of it. Drink gingerbeer or beer. Anything with yeast will help.

Then at about 3 make sure you get some protein snack into you. That will help with the milk issue at 9. I might even suggest express first thing in th emorning and give that to bubs (after he feeds from you) before bed.

Unfortonately I had 2 small babies and they fed through the night for quite a while. McKayla stopped at 11 months and up and until then went 4 hours. Andrew is a bit more erratic with that.

And is closer than 3 hours during the day. Other things that help me when I am a bit tired and sick and my milk supply drop is nuts (some babies however dont tolerate this). Oats, anything with oats even biscuits, cutting out junk, multivitamin.

Hope it goes better for you real soon.

Other thing you can do is bring feeding closer during the day. It is two fold. Get more calories in during the day and it will up your milk supply.