7 week old - I'm getting frustraded please help! (long!)

[@llli*leemami]

Hi all! First time posting here... I've been reading the threads for a while but I decided to post and get help on my own issues.
My sweet LO is 6 weeks and 4 days and lately she's been real fussy at the breast at night. She pulls and pushes in, cries, grunts, and so on. She also latches and un latches several times.
She does not sleep good at all, she doesn't sleep during the day after I feed her, or maybe she sleeps for 10-15 minutes and wakes up. Last night I moved to the recliner and after I feed her, she slept on my chest, it was around 2am so I didn't want to put her in the sleeper where she usually wakes up after a few minutes as I said.
I am having trouble getting her to sleep at night too. The last couple of nights have been rough... and I'm concern cause I'm coming back to work next Monday!
As always, I'm concern that she's not getting enough milk to make her go to sleep after a feeding.
Also, she seems to want to eat every hour or so. And at night is like she's never satisfied. She keeps sucking her fingers and hands after I've nursed her for an hour! And the last few days I've probably nursed her for more than an hour. I know I should not time the sessions, but sometimes it concerns me that she wants to eat for too long and maybe over eat or I overfeed her. She usually spits up every time she eats for too long.
I went to my lactation consultant here and I started taking fenugreek cause my milk supply was low after being advised to feed my baby formula to make her have a stool after she was born
I'm still taking 2 pills 3 times a day.
Any thoughts???
Thanks for any help you can give me!!!

[@llli*esthervegan]

welcome leemami!
I understand why you feel confused.
Your precious LO is an active competent nurser and yet
1. She never seems satisfied
2. she fusses during her feeds
3. she doesn't fall asleep after eating
4. She spits up after nursing
Hmmm... so why were you told your supply was low?
Your LO is gaining weight, right?
Are you exclusively breastfeeding her now?
Although it may seems as if you are overfeeding the baby, in actuality a breastfeeding baby regulates how much milk she gets while nursing, so it is rare for a baby to suckle more milk than her tummy can handle.
Spitting up is not always due to over feeding. sometimes its b/c baby needs to burp or baby just needs to spit up.

How is her weight gain?
Does she wet 6 diapers a day?
Are you still supplementing with formula?
it is not clear to me why you were told to do this. I mean I am not sure what the professionals were concerned about.
after a baby is born the colostrum helps to clear the meconium from the baby's system.
Mothers don't produce milk until a few days after the baby is born.
If you fed formula just that one time weeks ago, I'm pretty sure that is not having an impact on your milk supply now.
healthy breastfed babies do indeed want to nurse every 2-3 hours.
Sometimes a baby likes to marathon feed every day.
My LO's liked to nurse non stop from about 4 to 7 pm, or sometimes from 7 to 11 pm. And that was in addition to nursing every 2-3 hours.

i guess what I am trying to say is you and your baby seem perfectly normal to me. As long as she is gaining weight and your nipples are not painfully sore everything sounds like it is on track.
except for the not sleeping part.
that is still troubling. it is important for you to sleep so if you could lay down and nurse her you can accomplish two things at the same time.
you might feel more satisfied with how breastfeeding is going if you can sleep and nurse her at the same time.

[@llli*mommal]

Welcome to the forum!

I agree with the PP: your baby's behavior sounds very normal for a 6 week-old. Especially the evening fussiness: many babies have a period of several hours when they are extremely screamy and nothing, not even nursing, calms them down for more than a few minutes. Some things you can try which may help:
- Nurse. Nurse, nurse, nurse nurse nurse. . Baby can't scream at you if there's a breast in her mouth!
- White noise
- Calm house (lights, tv, and stereo down or off)
- Warm bath
- Take baby outside for some fresh air (sounds dumb but my kids would stop screaming the moment we took them outside)
- Motion (rocking, stroller ride, swing, bouncing, etc.)
- Closeness (snuggle baby close in a sling)

It sounds like you're trying to get your baby to sleep in a crib or cot. That may explain why she doesn't sleep for long, because babies instinctively hate sleeping alone. I'd encourage you to try co-sleeping, which can be done very safely if you follow the rules (no waterbeds, no mounds of soft bedding, no gaps in which baby can become entrapped, adults must be drug, smoke, and alcohol-free). I would also encourage you not to co-sleep in the recliner, since that is dangerous: many deaths blamed on co-sleeping occur when an adult sleeps on a couch or chair with a baby, and the baby rolls into the gap between the arm and the seat or the back and the seat, and smothers.

Frequent feedings- as much as every hour or even more often- are very normal. Breastmilk digests quickly and infant tummies are tiny, and it's normal and healthy for a baby to eat small, frequent meals rather than infrequent large ones. Most human beings don't graduate to a pattern of infrequent large meals until well into childhood, which is why you'll see moms of toddlers and young schoolchildren always toting around a snack bag! So I encourage you to keep nursing baby as often as she wants. You cannot overfeed a breastfed baby using the breast: when a baby is no longer hungry, her sucking slows and milk flow slows or stops. This is different from what happens with a bottle, since bottles deliver the same rapid flow of milk regardless of whether the baby is sucking hungrily for nutrition or slowly for comfort. You can overfeed very easily using the bottle.

Spit-up is normal, and is more of a laundry issue than a health issue as long as the baby is spitting up without evidence of pain. If the baby seems severely uncomfortable when spitting up, you may be dealing with acid reflux and you may want to talk to your pediatrician. If you do have a reflux-y baby, frequent nursing is an excellent way to help baby, since small frequent meals are less likely to provoke a spit-up, and because frequent swallowing helps keep stomach contents moving down, instead of back up, and because the calcium in breastmilk helps neutralize stomach acid.

Can you tell us how your baby's weight gain and diaper output are? If those things are normal, then you have the fundamentals down, and all you may need to do is to tweak the fine points.

[@llli*aprilsmagic]

How has baby's weight gain been and how are diapers? Those are a better indicator of how baby is eating than sleep or fussiness.

I've had one bottlefed baby and two breastfed babies who were just like you describe.

[@llli*leemami]

Thanks so much to all of you for your insights!
She weighted 10 pounds on Monday, the Dr. said that was good. And she wets plenty of diapers through the day and she has at least 2 dirty diapers every day. So I guess she's doing good!
@mommal and @esthervegan - she is sleeping in our room in a fisher price rock and play sleeper... we tried the crib for a couple of days and she did not like that at all! I have not tried co-sleeping in our bed. I'm scared my husband would forget she's there and squeeze her one night. I tried nursing her laying down in the morning a couple of days so I could sleep some, but I don't think I got her latched correctly. Are there any tips for nursing this way I can read/watch?
And I do turn white noise and she usually goes to sleep that way. The issue is that once she goes to sleep in my arms and I put her down in her sleeper, she sleeps maybe 10 minutes and then she wakes up. I'm afraid she's not getting all the sleep she needs... (I'm definitely not, but I'll do anything for her to get the rest she needs even if I can't)

And another question... I'm not sure if you work, but I have not have the chance to pump enough milk for her for my first day on Monday, since she's eating so frequently and for so long! Any tips?

Thanks again!!

[@llli*leemami]

Oh! and I forgot to mention!
I am not supplementing anymore, I am EBF.
The formula thing was during the first week. Then, on the second week check up with the Dr. she said that she was probably allergic to milk protein and she told me to supplement with non-dairy formula... and I did... after that, is when I started having issues with supply and went to the lactation consultant... around 3rd week, when I started the fenugreek. I am lowering the dose now. I've been doing better since then but now I got all these issues and I wasn't sure if there was something going on now.

[@llli*lllmeg]

When the normal course of breastfeeding has been interfered with in the early days-necessarily or not-this can make it take a little longer for everyone to get the hang of things. In your case, I think this happened with the supplementation. This delay in getting back on track is due to not only to tangible consequences (like a temporary suspected low milk production) but intangibles like mom having difficulty trusting her body, etc.
So what I am saying is your concerns etc. are normal, and now it is time to start trusting yourself and trusting your baby.

Your baby's near-constant cuing is normal at this age. Not wanting to sleep alone is normal. Nursing very very often, cue feeding, cluster nursing, baby needing to nurse to sleep, frequent waking, etc,. etc is all entirely normal. Spitting up lots is also very normal. You could look into whether you have a little forceful letdown, but that would not be typically consistant with LOW milk supply. This is an intense time for all new moms and it will get easier over time. Always, it gets easier.

Bottom line-as long as weight gain is good, and nursing is comfortable for you, all is great. None of that other stuff really matters at this point.

Due to the multiple variables that make adjusting to new motherhood take longer in some cases than others, some moms find returning to work when they originally planned is actually too early. They may look for alternatives, like delaying the return to work a bit, returning part time at first, etc. Things change very rapidly in the early months and many moms find that just a week or two of breathing room makes the return to work less stressful and more manageable.

Whenever you do return to work, make sure your caregiver knows how to feed baby in a breastfeeding supportive way. http://www.llli.org/docs/00000000000...astfedbaby.pdf Make sure to leave small amounts, 2 ounces in each bottle or bag, and no more than baby should need, to help avoid overfeeding and waste. Make sure you have an excellent well running pump, a small freezer stash (no need for more than a couple of days worth) and remember to pump at work as frequently as you can and nurse lots and lots when with baby. Yes that even means overnight. 2 months is usually far too young for a baby to be sleeping through the night, even the single 5 hour stretch that is the actual definition of "through the night" for a young baby. Night nursings help all moms but particularly working moms keep milk production where it needs to be.

Look again into safe co-sleeping aka bedsharing. The askdrsears website and the attachment parenting international website should have suggestions. Your instincts are good, it is not recommended that young baby sleep between mom and dad but rather on the other side of mom.

Nursing in a laid back position can also help you rest your body while you nurse. http://www.llli.org/docs/00000000000...astfeeding.pdf and http://www.biologicalnurturing.com/