Jaye posted about the baby whose mother reported a sudden drop in milk supply. Here's my take on it. The baby is four months old. He's healthy, sociable, normal and developing well. He is neither dehydrated nor starving, so we need not be too concerned about his apparent lack of calories ... at least not as an urgent situation. Mother's milk supply appears to need protecting, and building up, but she has milk, and it is not about to totally disappear. We've ruled out pregnancy. It doesn't look to me like a sudden drop in milk supply. When he was 2 months old, his weight gain started to be lower than expected. This might have been a physiological 'blip' - no baby gains at exactly the same rate every day/week. However, I wonder if it was at this point the mother started to do this 'force feeding' Jaye describes so eloquently in her second post - yikes! The family are involved, and there seems to have been a huge amount of anxiety and concern, possibly because of this fear that the mother is going to follow the previous experiences of the family. Over a little time, this has become a nursing strike - made worse by the continued force feeding. The behaviour Jaye describes is *classic* nursing strike - it's unusual to see this in a 4 mth old, but I do not think impossible. I wonder what people think of these suggestions: * make feeding comfortable, enjoyable and spontaneous for mother and baby (skin to skin and so on - if the baby only wants to feed when sleepy, that's ok, but hold him as much of the time as poss) * stop the test weights (that's controversial, I know....but see above: we are not in an emergency situation here and we do not need to know what his intake is at every feed) which reduce the spontaneity, increase the anxiety of mother and baby, and micro-manage the situation unnecessarily (IMO) * stop the formula top ups (again, controversial, but again, not necessary (IMO) because we are not in an emergency here) * if mother wants to express, and can do so without reducing the opportunities her baby has to come to the breast, then yes, she can express and store the milk for times when she really feels the baby has to have something * co-sleeping, co-bathing....anything to lure this baby back to the breast so he starts to enjoy it again From the evidence Jaye gives, I think this is a behavioural situation, not a hormonal/pathological/nutritional one. Wd be interested in other people's ideas on this :) Heather Welford Neil NCT bfc, tutor, UK *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET email list is powered by LISTSERV (R). There is only one LISTSERV. To learn more, visit: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html