I have mother's permission to post.
Baby is 2 months old, exclusively breastfed, with adequate weight gain and
impressive longitudinal growth of 9 cm since birth (nearly 4 inches!), has had
two episodes of self-limiting febrile illness during which he was not very
interested in feeding.  Ten days ago began a BF strike, would not feed except
briefly at night for the first two days, and not at all for the next day.
Mother expressed milk and fed him by cup and bottle, but baby was not happy and
had a slight cough.  Older sib in day care where there have been several cases
of pertussis recently.  Baby is too young to have been immunized by vaccine
yet.

After the two days of almost no feeding he began coming back to breast but
unreliably.  Admitted to peds ward Dec.1 with mother for feeding problem, and
has taken about 20 oz. total per day there, with fine weight gain since
admission.  Takes more and more from the breast and is being 'topped up' with
EBM in bottle in order to meet ward goal for intake which is 600 cc or about 20
oz.  Other illness, esp. infection, has been ruled out.

Mother reports that baby has never wanted to spend more than about 5 minutes at
the breast, and staff confirm her observation that he gets bothered about a
minute into feeds, corresponding to when MER occurs.  Staff observe also that
he latches far out on the nipple, and does not want to draw more breast into
his mouth.

My hunch is overactive MER at the bottom of everything, thinking that baby's
discomfort was exacerbated by a mild upper resp.infection last week leading to
the BF strike.  Will be trying whatever helps for that, but meanwhile I want to
know if anyone else has any bright ideas about what this could be.

thanks for any and all feedback!
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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