Baby Breastfeeding from One Breast Only - Cloudmom

Hi everybody, Melissa, thanks so much for tuning in to CloudMom.com. Answering a question today from a mom, Kamal Shyla, "My baby will only eat from one breast, and then he's hungry an hour later. What can I do?" Great question. This is something that, in my view, has to do with trying to make sure the baby's getting as full a feed as possible. Now one advantage to the fact that your baby's only eating from one breast is that your baby's actually, in all likelihood, getting through to the hind milk, which is the richer, more caloric, more satisfying milk that comes later on from the breast, and not the foremilk which is the initial milk that your baby gets. If you pump, you can see this happening where the initial milk is watery, more greenish color, and the hind milk has a creamier, fuller, you know, texture to it. So anyway, it's actually quite good if your baby is wanting to eat only one hour later that he's taking all that milk from that one breast, because it means your getting through the hind milk. But what can you do to try to get your baby to have a fuller feeding and to move him over to the other breast? Well, are you sure, I would ask, that he's completely burped? Maybe he's like a slow burper. Sometimes with my babies, they would just stop eating. They would be like, eating, eating, eating, and then all of a sudden, stop! And they would not take another drop, and I would find that they had a huge burp in them or even two burps. And then they would start eating again. So I would try that. I would try making sure he's fully alert and awake. You could try changing your baby's diaper. You could even take a five to ten minute break, make sure there are no more burps, and try feeding your baby again. The point is that your baby is awake, fully burped and rejecting more milk. That is a full feeding. If all those things are happening and he still wants to eat in an hour, you might have a baby that wants to eat every hour, which I hope is not the case because I think it's kind of tiring. But it might be the case. So anyway, try to make sure all those things are not happening. In terms of the breast situation, what I recommend doing, and this is a very personal thing, think about what works for you and check with your doctor, is to pump for about five minutes, using a dual pump so that you're pumping both ***, five to ten minutes after a feed. That way you'll be evening things out. And on the breast from which you have not fed, you will not go quite so long without doing a feeding. So that's one tip. You'll also be able to store up a little bit of milk that way, which might give you some flexibility down the line. And then make sure to keep track, in this situation, of from which breast you're feeding. So if you feed on the left side, then you can attach a little safety pin to your, sorry this is my left, to your right side. And that way you'll know to start from that other breast the next time. Now there are also apps where you can do this or you can write it down. I tended to be a righty. I always favor my right side. I write on my left right side. I carry my bag on my right side, and low and behold my right side produced a lot more milk, with every baby. And I think it was because I always favor that right side. I always had a tendency to put the baby on the right side and start there. So it's really good to get in the habit of reminding yourself where the last feeding took place so you can try to do this evenly. So anyway, I hope these little comments are helpful to you. Please write in, let us know how it's going. Moms who have dealt with this, please weigh in, love to hear from you. And thank you so much for watching CloudMom.com.