gorging herself at the breast?

nduquette23

I am a lurker here and normally post on my BMB, however I've got a breastfeeding question for any of you ladies.

DD and I are restarting breastfeeding after having to EP for 3 weeks and supplement. My supply has finally established and she is latching on great. However, she will gorge herself at the breast. I don't know if this is because she was bottle fed her first couple weeks of life, or if she just likes to stuff herself. The problem is tons of BM will pour out of her mouth. She sometimes spits up, but this is more just pouring.

I assumed that if DD was full she would not latch on and continue to suck, yet she does. She often falls asleep at the breast, and I don't know if she needs to eat more, so when she's fussy again I latch her back on. Am I doing something wrong here? We are both re-learning breastfeeding and I hate having DD dribble BM everywhere when she's full. She will also take a few sips of a bottle if offered, then spit it up, so it's hard for me to know when she really needs to eat and when she's pigging out. 

tokenhoser

Try a position where she's more on top of the breast, so that she has to work against gravity to get milk. It sounds like you've got a very easy let-down right now, so she might just be getting milk faster than she can swallow it, or getting milk when she's trying to comfort suck (which is not a bad habit, it's normal).

See this sheet

Constant breastfeeding at about 3 weeks is normal. She's growing like crazy! Plus, all she knows is how it feels great to be snuggled up with mom. You can't offer the breast too much at this point.

PotomacSt

I BF from the start and LO didn't get bottles, and she did the same thing. It was only when she was fussy. She'd act like she wanted to eat so I'd let her, even if I was pretty sure she was full because I had JUST fed her. Like PP said, it was like she wanted to comfort suck but didn't know how to do it but not eat. Sometimes she'd just let it leak out of her mouth, other times she would swallow it then spit up massive amounts.

I always tried offering her a finger or paci to suck on, although that rarely worked, she just wanted the boob. Trying to distract her occasionally worked (rocking, walking, shushing). Around 7 weeks she finally learned to comfort suck without eating, and soon after that she lost interest in comfort sucking.

Sorry this isn't very helpful. For us it was just a phase she needed to get past.