Expert: ruth kraft - 4/1/2010

Question
Hi there!  I have been crying trying to figure out what's going on with my son/me?  He is just over 14 weeks old, fed exculsively breast milk.  He has a bottle of expressed breast milk aprox once every 10 days, when his daddy watches him so I can get out of the house alone, lol!  He hadn't had any issues, then about 5 days ago he got a fever (101.4) for two days, we continued nursing, but the last 3 days, he will nurse for about 2-3 minutes, then stop and start screaming!  I try soothing him verbally and cuddling him, then trying to put him back to my breast, which will either work for another couple of minutes, then scream again, or he'll refuse it and scream at my audacity!  So then I pump what's left, and feed it to him via bottle, and usually he's okay.  We took him into his pa-c today, and had his ears, throat, and weight checked... All were perfect.  It's a horrible feeling to not be able to feed him.  I got some fenugreek hoping to increase my supply for pumping ( manually by the way) I'm exhausted and my heart is breaking, I'm not sure what's wrong or what to do... Help??? Thank you!!

Answer
It sounds to me like there was something making his throat sore, likely from the fever , that got better before you went to the dr. If his throat was sore, and he related it to nursing, that might be his refusal and fussiness.  it would be unlikely to decrease your milk supply dramatically over a few days of short nursing periods, but if you want to see if that might be the culprit, then take metamucil every day a few times a day, fenugreek and mothers milk tea can help sometimes as well. Anything that gets your digestion going will help you produce more milk. If you are going to pump all the time, I suggest getting a good pump that you can double pump and manusally will get exhausting quickly. If you are interested let me know and I can help you find one cheaper than you will pay  retail. Continue to offer the breast, with the intention that he will take it or not and either way is no big deal, he might just need a little more time to get back to it. and hopefully he will :)

I hope that helped!
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