Breastfeeding

Making baby happy again during mealtime?

My son is 6 mos and has begun crying a lot while breastfeeding. He'll eat for a little bit, then pull off and cry. I'll sit him up to burp, but he'll cry even harder. I then put him back down to eat and he'll relatch. We do this a few times until he refuses to eat from that breast at all. We switch sides and repeat the same process. After the first 30-60 sec on each breast, he also starts to struggle with me - stiff-arming, scratching, pushing away but still sucking. 

He started this just before we introduced him to rice cereal. I figured he was either not satisfied with milk anymore (especially  b/c my milk supply when I pump has been decreasing), or he was teething - but no teeth yet.

Anyhoo, each session ends with him crying, but refusing to eat. He stops crying when I get up off of the couch and also when I whip out the camera (?). He gives me a few burps usually. Then I'll offer him either rice cereal or carrots and sometimes he wants it and sometimes he doesn't. 

What do you think? Why is he crying so much? What's changed and what should I be doing differently?

Re: Making baby happy again during mealtime?

  • Is there anything else going on in the room? We haven't started solids, so Im not much help, but LO rolls and scratches and grabs if either of us is distracted. I need to turn down/off TV or radio. Is there anything different with your let down? Is he still having enough wet/dirty diapers?
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  • Sometimes he is squirmy b/c of distractibility, but sometimes it seems like he's actually resisting. He spends most of his time eating while he's halfway across the boppie causing him to pull on my nipple and have a shallow latch. You would think oversupply or fast letdown, but I have no other indication that that's the case. I am down to 3 oz when I pump instead of 5 oz. I don't feel any letdown.

    I really think that he's complaining b/c there's not enough milk and he's getting frustrated, but so many times he doesn't want to eat anything else after we BF.

    I'm still getting lots of wet diapers and about a poo a day. I haven't weighed him recently. He's happy as a clam the rest of the day... I'm really at a loss.

    I tried contacting La Leche League, but no one's gotten back to me yet. :(

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  • Do you EBF or does he get bottles on a regular basis?

    Has anything else changed?  Teeth? 

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  • No formula, but he does take a bottle of breastmilk during the work week. I went back to work after 13 weeks, so that's not a recent change. I do 10 hrs, 4 days a week. During those 4 days, I'm lucky to get to feed him more than twice, but it's EBF the other 3 days. No teeth yet. I did start exercising around the same time that he started complaining. Maybe I'm not hydrating enough...
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