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August 2026 Babies 🇬🇧

Breastfeeding & Pumping

Apologies for the long post.

My baby girl is nearly a month, we had a great start to our breastfeeding journey and she picked up more than her birth weight in 10 days.

I’m finding it harder to get a deeper latch with her now, and find she is popping off more, I think my let down is really fast as well as she almost comes off for a break then wants to be put straight back on. I am hand expressing initially and leaning back while feeding to try help this - sometimes it does sometimes she’s still gulps and chokes. But she also seems to ‘lazy’ to open her mouth wide and it takes a few tries.

She’s also a very gassy baby, sometimes I have to de latch her a few times to burp her so she feeds more comfortably but the she sometimes will just fall asleep and won’t go back on the breast which I’m assuming is fine as she is content after a feed. I have started her on infacol to see if this helps.

Now at night, she wakes up maybe once and then I wake her up, purely just because of how full my breasts get and I’m so anxious about getting blocked duct- it was working fine and we were feeding almost every 3ish hrs at night, however now she is too sleepy and I can’t latch her or if I do she doesn’t stay awake that long and her latch hurts. My nipples are feeling so raw in the mornings.

So should I just leave her to sleep? I feel she is hurting my nipples more at nigh with her sleepy latch but then do I then need to pump? I don’t want to create an oversupply and I don’t want to get a blocked duct - such a balancing act to juggle with and I’m feeling so overwhelmed.

I would like to start a mini stash of milk so if I’m away there is milk for her but I don’t want to get into a heavy pumping regime.

She is an emergency c section baby (if that is relevant for anything) we are going to a chiropractor this week to see if this helps with tension. We also have been referred to check for a tongue tie but from what I’ve read and seen of a tongue tie she doesn’t seem to have one, but I’m no expert.

I’m going to drop into our local breastfeeding peer support group in the week but thought just to ask here.

Thank you,

Sincerely a very overwhelmed FTM