Letdown

lpowell333

Is there anything I can do to help with forceful or over active letdown? We were doing great with BF for the first 2 weeks and now at 3 weeks she thrashes around and yanks herself off ever two seconds, I can tell its coming to fast for her, I usually give up and give her a bottle and then pump, but I don't want to have to always do that

OakTreeMommy

I don't know if this is helpful because I don't have experience with this but if you aren't already try feeding her when she's calm? Say she's just woken up and is still sleepy, then she may drink slower and take more frequent breaks. Also I'd say if you have the resources contact a LC I'm sure they'll have some helpful tips for you. GL!

jess9802

Laid back nursing. Latch baby on and then lean back - baby will be more upright and won't be flooded with milk.

ForeverEverAfter

At 5 months I still have bad days with my let down. At night I do side lying nursing with a burp cloth underneath so the extra can dribble out of her mouth. During the day I recline back so she's nursing 'uphill' healing the flow to slow down. Sometimes all you can do is wait for it to slow down. Take baby off when it really sprays, let the first bit express into a cloth (or bottle if you want to save it) and then when it slows to a dripping put baby back on.

Working with the LC I tried a lot of things, nothing has cured it. At one point I pumped until after letdown and then started nursing, but I wound up with oversupply. At 4 months after another oversupply issue we started using a nipple shield to slow the flow, but DD wasn't a fan. It's frustrating, but you don't need to switch to bottles, as your LO gets older they can handle it better. My LO bends the nipple in her mouth to slow the flow and rarely needs to pop off these days. 

DCMerged

When she unlatches, hand express into a towel or nursing pad and when the flow slows down, relatch her. That is what I did.

Eventually your body will most likely normalize once the supply and demand is established. It took a few months but this happended for me and also baby learned to deal with the fast flow.

I didn't try this but heard great things about block feeding.

Bottles and pumping aren't going to help and, in fact, may hurt BF success.