My daughter wants to nurse constantly please help!

[@llli*candcsmomma]

Hello I am new here this is my first post. I was just searching online for answers and I am hoping this would be a good place to get some.

My daughter is 19.5 months old. For the past 2 weeks she wants to nurse nonstop. She has even been waking up in the night to nurse and the past few nights this has increased to 3 times a night. I dont know what to do. I am starting to feel like I am not producing anymore, but then at least 2-4 feedings a day I notice let down (which I guess for the past year or so I havent noticed, maybe just got too used to it?) and she started to really gulp it down for a while. So then that rules out the not producing enough anymore.

I nursed my son to 18 months and by that time he was only nursing 3-4 times a day. Right now she would nurse every 30-60 minutes if I let her. She also eats a good amount of solid foods as well, and I have been offering her flax milk in a sippy, which she does like, but seems to prefer the breastmilk.

Which brings me to all the allergies. She is allergic to milk, shellfish, peanut, egg, soy, and wheat, although we are getting her tested in Jan. for celiac because her dad has celiac and she shows a lot of the signs. She and I are both on a gluten, dairy, egg.. etc.. free diet. We also stay away from other common allergens just in case tree nuts.. things like that, really not hard to get around since everything else is cut out already!

I have always said I would be the weirdo nursing my 3-4 year old if it was going to help her outgrow some of these. The doctor told me when she was an infant that her milk allergy was so sever she did not know of any formulas that she could prescribe because even the ones they give to babies with milk allergies are just very broken down milk protein. She was reacting to things I was eating that said "may contain traces of milk" or manufactured in a facility that also produces items containing milk".

I think my body is wearing. I cant get enough calories to keep up. I started nursing her I was a size 12, I am now a 4, although my size 4 jeans are falling off me, so I assume I am probably a 2 now. I am not doing any workouts or anything to loose weight, quite to opposite I eat everything in site that I can eat and the weight still drops off. I just dont know if my body can do this any more. I started taking veggie protien shakes on top of my normal meals to try and help, instead of a 3-6 lb weight loss each week, I am only loosing 2-4 lbs a week now, but I still feel like I am wasting away.

In my mind I am not ready to quit nursing her yet.

Thank you so much if you made it this far in reading
I am just wondering if anyone here has any tips or advice. Or can answer why she is suddenly needing to nurse all day/night?

[@llli*still.here]

Hi mama,

Let me start with why she might be nursing frequently. It could be a growth spurt. It could also be that she's teething. If she doesn't have her one year molars yet it could be that or she could be getting her 2 year molars a little early. My daughter had her 2 years in by 19 mos.

Regarding allergies. My son also has a number of food allergies, so feel your pain. When I was on the elimination diet with him I lost about 40 pounds. It's so great that you are able and willing to continue nursing your daughter to make sure she is getting what she needs with her limited diet. You need to make sure you are getting what you need too, though. Talk to your pediatrician about getting a referral to a registered dietician. They can help you explore options for your daughter AND for you to make sure you are getting what you need to stay healthy. Are you taking any kind of vitamin or dietary supplement?

Do you have a pediatric allergist? If not, you need to be seeing one. A child with that many allergies, and that highly reactive, needs to be seeing a specialist. And your doctor sounds...a bit uninformed, to be honest. There are formulas available (Neocate and Elecare) that are corn-based and broken down to constituent amino acids that 99% of food-allergic kids can tolerate and they offer specialized formulas for children over one that they can live on up until 12 years of age. Not that I think you need to switch necessarily, I am just surprised that your doctor isn't aware of them. I know Neocate also has products for older kids that are powdered supplements you can add to food and beverages that will give your child the vitamins/nutrients they need as well as juice-like drink boxes and 'flavor straws' that you can add to water to give it flavor and added nutrition. There may be some options here that you can add to your lo's diet that will get her more from solids and will maybe allow you to nurse less.

I don't know if it will help or hurt you for me to say that I think you are very fortunate to be able to still be nursing your daughter. My son never stopped reacting, even when I was down to very few foods in my elimination diet. I ended up having to wean him at 9 months and put him straight on Neocate, no solids at all until he was over one. He is almost four now and is less reactive in general, though he's still highly allergic to a number of things. It's becoming easier to add those "questionable" foods and "common allergens" into his diet. I hope that gives you some light at the end of the tunnel.

[@llli*mommal]

I'd guess that it's the 2 year molars which are causing the frequent nursing. I'd stick a finger back behind her last molars and see if you can feel anything starting to saw through her gums.

Have you talked to a nutritionist about your own diet? There might be some piece of the puzzle that's missing, which would be obvious to the professional...

ETA: with everything Still.here said.

[@llli*candcsmomma]

Trying to hit everything here~

She has all of her teeth, except her 2 year molars, that could be it, but I didnt notice an increase in nursing like this with any of her other teeth. Now that you mention it she did bite me a couple days ago and the ONLY time she has ever bitten anyone was when she was seemly getting all of her teeth at once and she was like a piranha! I was thinking growth spurt at first, but this increase has been going for 2 weeks now and previously it was 2-3 days maximum where she would nurse more and then sprout upwards.

I do take supplements. I do a prenatal, calcium, vit. D, and a few others. I have talked with 2 different nutritionists, one who specializes with nursing mothers. They didnt recommend any more that what I was already doing. I eat 5-6 meals a day, and I am not talking small meals here, I am talking like sumo wrestler sized meals a couple times a day and large-regular portions for the others, snacking is a joke, it never stops at a snack, it always turns into a full meal sized portion.

We had seen an allergist when she was a few months old, he was an idiot, told me I was crazy, wouldnt look at my journal where I kept track of what I ate, when I ate it, when she reacted, what the reaction was. etc. Said it was not possible for a baby her age to be allergic (she started reacting to things at 3 weeks old). Her father has been teaching medical students for a couple years has went back to school to get his MD now and he even told me he understood where this allergist was coming from, babies that young have not developed whatever it is that causes an allergic reaction (sorry he is in the medical field not me! HAHA) But he said had he not seen the reactions with his own eyes he would have thought I was a crazy patient coming in too.

The allergist did the test and everything came back negative. My poor baby looked like a strawberry from head to toe, she wasnt keeping any food down, she had horrid direah and none of her food was getting digested, it came out looking exactly as it did going in, and this jerk of a doctor had the nerve to tell me nothing was wrong with her. He told me to start drinking milk again, she wasnt allergic.

I gave up for a while and I have now moved to another state. I am going to be seeing another allergist in Jan., I was telling her father who the allergist was and as soon as I said the name he says "oh yes I know him, he writes lots of papers on it, I follow his research"... so I am hoping that means he is a good doctor!!!

It wasnt just the milk and she was reacting to corn, wheat, soy, etc etc etc ... at the time I wasnt eating corn either. But now we are thinking it was because it wasnt "gluten free" but she seems to do fine with things that are corn as long as they say gluten free. I didnt want to do formula anyway, I think she was just saying it as "good thing you are nursing" my supply was more than enough, I actually ended up donating a ton and a mother nearby was able to give her son breast milk exclusively for the first year just from my donations alone. My supply was crazy and I had dumped it when I was nursing my son because I never thought you could donate. I felt sick watching all that milk go down the drain, so the second time around someone told me I should donate and I did some searching on it I only ever pumped enough to stop the pain of fullness, but sometimes that meant 10-13 oz in a sitting.. after my daughter had finished nursing. We always joked that I probably could have supported triplets. HAHA!

My daughter drinks water like crazy, probably 2+ sippy fulls a day. She drinks about half a sippy of flax milk a day, after that she just starts playing in it. She was never big on food, she had horrid reflux and was between 12-13 months old when she was finally able to swallow and keep down any solids. She still at 19.5 months has issues with the reflux now and then. She was throwing up 3-8 times a day until about 14-15 months. We had a ensophegeal (sp?) something type test done to see if it was anything more serious and they said nothing showed and she would outgrow it. It has gotten a lot better, she weighs 24 lbs now, she is super skinny, but tall, she went from being in the 99% for height and weight to being in the 99% for height and the 42% for weight within just a few months. Since 15 months she has slowly started to get back up there, but I dont think she will ever be near the top of the scale in weight again LOL. My son was always off the charts for everything too.

Right now my diet is~ gluten/dairy/egg free breads and pastas, fresh friuts and veggies, gluten free oatmeal, soy/dairy free butter, flax milk, beef and chicken, on the rare occasion I will mix it up and throw in some salmon... that pretty much sums it up! LOL I stay away from berries as much as possible, and I wasnt eating tomatoes for the longest time and then added those back in and she didnt react so now I can have sauce instead of just butter on my pasta

I find I cook with a lot more herbs and spices now to give flavor to foods that seem bland. I have been on this diet for so long now that I dont even crave things like brownies, cakes etc. I was able to make chocolate chip cookies for thanksgiving that we could eat, very pricey but worth every bite LOL and for christmas I plan on making a pumpkin pie we can eat. I know that is backwards, but I was more confindent in my cookie baking abilities than my pie baking abilities so I had to give the cookies a go first! I am slowly getting more adventurous. I was sooo cautious about anything before I was afraid to add anything new in. I made pizza for the first time a couple months ago, again it was like a $20 pizza after buying all the ingredients, but worth every bite! I guess if I made the pizza and cookies every night I would go bankrupt, but will keep some weight on!

[@llli*dirtlover.mama]

My DD is 29 months old and still nursing..and has started to nurse more frequently and has had some pretty fussy days..I am waiting for a molar to pop out! Hang in there with the food issues!

[@llli*castlerock.mommy]

Hi,

DD had multiple "intolerances" and was highly reactive as well - but at 22 months, she successfully outgrew them. Still nursing at 31 months But up until then, I couldn't eat anything processed on shared equipment, let alone a "normal" meal. It was a good thing I had gained 65 lbs during my pregnancy; it was really hard keeping weight on when she was 18 months old. I weighed what I did when I was 14; 10 lbs under my normal (size 2/4) weight. I constantly ate huge amounts of food. Now that she has outgrown her intolerances, she and I can eat "normally", and she is not exclusively nursing, I am finally not starving all the time I'm back to my normal weight.

Fat is your friend. Use liberal amounts of your "safe" oils on everything.

We had horrible reflux issues related to her intolerances. Once we knew what she was "allergic" to, the reflux improved. My food diary was the best indicator for our allergist. (As an aside, I don't know if elecare or neocate products are gluten free. You should check their websites FWIW. I knew those were my only options, just in case. I know you aren't formula feeding, and I didn't want to formula feed either, but when I knew *my* breastmilk was her only option, I always panicked - what if something catastrophic happened to me? DH has to know what is safe to feed her. And they make supplemental formulas for older children, as stated before - think hypoallergenic Pediasure, if LO's diet is so restrictive that you need that).

Ditto to what everyone else said - teething is no fun. Sometimes it feels like DD is latched on all night. Those two year old molars are no picnic.

Good luck with your new doctor, and I hope you get some answers! We had cross contamination issues early on in my elimination diet, so it's worth it to go back and try foods again now that you're gluten free.

[@llli*dirtlover.mama]

Hi,


Ditto to what everyone else said - teething is no fun. Sometimes it feels like DD is latched on all night. Those two year old molars are no picnic.

True!!

[@llli*candcsmomma]

Thank you all for your responses! I just wanted to update..

Is it possible I am not producing as I was before?

She had been eating what seemed non stop, shortly after my last post she began refusing the boob altogether. She will want it a few times a day but only stay latched for a few seconds-2 or 3 minutes. Then she wants down to play. She refuses the boob before bed. The only time I can get her to nurse is at 2am and again first thing in the morning. Well last night she went and did an overnight for the first time with her dad. He said she did just fine, she didnt fuss for the boob at all.

I have been pumping and since 4pm yesterday (the last time she nursed) I have only gotten 5oz. (4.5 of those ounces being first thing this morning.) I know she is more efficient than any pump, (I have a medela pump-n-style advanced) but this worries me that I am not making enough anymore and that is why she was wanting the boob so much and now not wanting it at all.

I was really leaning toward teeth after all of your replies, but she doesnt have any other symptoms. With all her other teeth she had nearly every symptom from runny nose, diarrhea, vomiting, diaper rash, fussy, fever, etc. None of that this time except the nursing issues, which she didnt seem to have at all for her other teeth. :/