Expert: ruth kraft - 9/3/2010

Question
My daughter is 5 weeks old and very impacient.At first i had a low milk supply but I have been pumping extra to boost it up.  I have just the right amount of milk coming in to fill her up but the let down is so slow and she gets impacient and cries and cries for sometimes hours!  She is fine once the milk comes down but then gets impacient again once it slows down; like after 5 minutes.  I am having to pump and feed her to keep her happy and i am going crazy. I really want to keep BREASTFEEDING not bottle feeding only because i love the feeling and the bonding (i have a good feeding every once in a while, but she seems to fall asleep and not get enough milk before she complains).  I bought the pump to pump and store for when i go back to work but have been unsuccessful in storing because i am having to pump for every feeding.  Any suggestions or tips???

Answer
If you are feeding her your pumped milk in a bottle this is what is causing more of her frustration. It is called nipple confusion. Babies who get the bottle in the first few weeks after birth learn that they get instant gratification when eating from a bottle so they get frustrated at the breast.

The best way to overcome this is NO MORE BOTTLES. not even one. Before she is crying and hungry but you know she is going to want food, start to massage your breasts to get the milk to start flowing, or pump for a minute to get the milk flowing, then let her eat. She has to learn that she needs to work for her food. You can also while she is nursing do breast compressions, where you squeeze the upper parts of the breast tissue to make the milk flow faster for her. Do this for a couple weeks only until she learns that milk flows easily from  your breasts.

You are also at a critical time for her to be nursing at breast. she will want to nurse more frequently over the next 2 weeks because she is going through a growth spurt. This is not because you don't have enough milk but because she is preparing your body to make more.

SO, no more bottles for preferably 3 weeks until she learns how to nurse not bottle feed. I suggest nursing her also when she is just starting to wake up before she has the chance to become hungry and upset.

If you search nipple confusion you will see how common this is. Your let down isn't actually slow but rather, the baby impatient from learning a bottle versus the breast :) this is good news, because babies are easy to train to nurse!