Expert: ruth kraft - 4/22/2010

Question
My 6 month old eats about 160z of babyfood a day and nurses in between.

His nursing behavior is driving me up the wall. He keeps latching on just long enough to get my milk to let down, then he decides he is not hungry and I'm left with aching breast.  

What do I do about this? Why does this happen do you think? I also notice that my supply is going down.  I had to pump and dump for one day and only got about 12oz of milk.  Is this a low supply? How often should I be nursing him?

Any pointers/tips/advice would be SO helpful!!! Thank you!

Answer
Hello :) 16 ounces of food sounds like alot to me for a 6 month old. Usually at 6 months you are just starting food, and that would be about 4 meals. It would make sense to me that milk has slowed down some because the baby is getting more solid food than breastmilk.

until the baby is a year old, most of its nurtition should still be coming from breastmilk.

So I would reccommend cutting back some solid foods and put more breastfeedings in there. The behaviour your talking about sounds more to me like the baby is cluster feeding and just keeping that connection with you. Baby isn't that hungry or he would nurse, SO, I would suggest trying to redirect him to other things that he can play with etc and make him wait longer to nurse. put if off a half hour or so and then nurse. If you cut back solid foods and do this, my guess would be that he will nurse longer.

The 12 ounces may or may not be low milk. its hard to tell as there are so many variables. time of day, why you were pumping and dumping, what kind of pump you have and how well it works with your body. in general , it doesnt sound too bad because of the amount of solid food the baby gets and their suck is far more efficient than any pump. But I wouldn't worry about that and try to focus on moving forward. The more the baby nurses, the more you will make :)

I hope that helped!
Ruth Kraft
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