The last couple of days my LG has been a bit of a pain to BF. She will latch and unlatch constantly thought a BF session, arches her back and then has quite a bit of spit up afterwards. I think this is due to a fast let down which has got worse as she's been feeding more overnight - sleep regression I think. I think I need to hand express/haaka before feeding her but no idea how to go about this or how much to aim to get? I've never managed to get anything off with a haaka unless I use it on the opposite side when feeding and even then it's only a small amount, so this wouldn't help. Any tips please?
Read more on PeanutThe views expressed in community are solely the opinions of participants, and do not reflect those of Peanut.
Learn more about our guidelines.
I used to massage my boobs with moisturiser and apply a hot compress to encourage a let down and then I would hand express whilst using the little suction the haaka would offer. That’s how I got the most out. A saying that helped me understand is your milk isn’t a lake it’s a river. So you won’t really run out of milk if you hand express. Personally I’d express 1-2 ounces then feed my boy. If I was super engorged I’d do more. But usually it was just the let down until the milk stopped coming out easily when hand expressing

Not sure if that made any sense but hope it helps

Gosh it’s terrible isn’t it?! I find it really disheartening. I hand express into a muslin with a screaming baby 😢. But if I got my act together I could express into the Hakka instead. I’ve found if I do it for a couple of minutes making sure i make my way round the whole nipple, he will eventually latch on. It usually gets rid of it for a bit. I then might need to do it again for a second letdown. It’s not every feed for me and I did think we’d cracked it last week but it was back yesterday 😢. I’ve found he will respond better to it when he’s not very tired.

I had a fast let down and didn’t express before, I just changed position and leaned back quite a bit with baby in cradle hold so it took quite a bit of gravity off. A midwife suggested it to me and it worked straight away. Now my LO gets annoyed when the flow is slow 🥲 it took a few feeds until he was comfortable but I noticed a difference straight away

Also here to suggest looking at positions you feed in as someone mentioned above. We can’t cradle feed as he can’t cope with the let down so it all just dribbles out his mouth and we end up soaked. I switched to laid back breastfeeding and it was a game changer, we never have any dribbles now and because he is on top of my boob he can control the feed as he wants xx
Oh my gosh, I've just fed her more reclined and it was fine..no unlatching, no arching back, normal amount of spit up. Thank you girls 🥰 feel terrible that I didn't think about this before though 🤦🏻♀️could have saved us both some distress! Fingers crossed it continues xx