Slower and slower let down

by Sarah
(Medford, OR, USA)

Hi,
My baby girl is 11 months old and breast feeding has progressivly gotten harder. At the begining it was easy my milk came in and I had sooo much of it (too much sometimes it would almost drowned her!) She only ate for about 5 min but gained weight 3x faster than she needed to. When she was around 3 months we both got a really bad cold/flu and she dodn't eat very much and I didn't pump, when I went to pump again I no longer could! I tried and tried and tried but I couldn't get a let down and it seemed like I almost lost my suply. After that it seemed like madi would sometimes get upset during feeding, like she wasn't getting enough and by 5 months Madi started getting really frusterated , I never felt my let down so I was never sure if she was getting enough, but we just kind of pushed through. Now it sometimes takes me 5 mins for my milk to let down and sometimes it seems like it never does and I can now feel my let down. I want to continue breasfeeding until Madi is at least 2 but she is a SUPER active baby and has never really nursed for comfort. She just this month has really started having solids (we tried earlier but she acted like she was going to wean herself so we held off as long as we could) Anyways waiting for my milk to letdown is making her super impatient and as she gets more active I don't think she is going to want to nurse much longer and I really don't want to go through all of this with my next baby! It seems like it is worse when I am ovulating I don't know if this is normal or not?

I will also add that we got awful advice from our previous pediatician! Madi had tummy and gas issues and he informed me that I was over feeding her (she was eating every 2-3 hrs) He said she only needed to eat every 5 hours on a schedule ( she was less than 3 month old when he told me this) Unfortunatly I listened to him for awhile and it seemed like not only was madi unhappy but I started to feel my let down and it took forever! Thank the Lord I had gone to a feeding on demand WIC class and my mom was an attachment style parent and after a few weeks we gave up on him all together! I through process of elimination realized she has a protien intolerence and giving up dairy and peanut butter made a huge difference!

I would love to feed my sweet madi for as long as possible if you have any advice I would greatly apriciate it! Thank you for what you do! Women have somehow lost all confidence in themselves and their bodies as well as their baby, mommy instincts! I almost missed out on some of the miracles of motherhood and it is women like you educate us mommies!