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Are they doing paced feedings with him? My friend was having this issue and come to find out they were giving him breastmilk with a high flow nipple and not pacing. Once they switched he started eating way less

Do they discard unused milk? For now I'd send an extra bottle to use if needed. Then I'd take fenugreek and add a pumping session in on the weekends. What I did was nurse right before I dropped him off. That helped a ton.. I also send solids to school. Normally rice cereal and apple sauce at that age. If helped him stay full longer.

@matador84: That sounds like a growth spurt. For what it's worth, I never found adding a third pumping session helped. What did was pumping right after our 5 am feed. I could get 5 ounces in just a few minutes

How far apart are they giving his bottles? If he had been crying for 3 hours at 2:30pm, that seems really early to give his last bottle unless you work really unusual hours! Maybe they're misreading his signals?

DD2 is 6 months and had a huge growth spurt around 5 months, so I bet that is it. She does take 13.5 oz (3 4.5 oz bottles) over 8-9 hours at daycare since she turned 4 months, though, and she took 12 oz before that.

The only thing that really works for me is adding another pumping session in the evening right before I go to bed (3-4 hours after putting baby to bed in my case). DD2 always wakes up at least once overnight, but she's able to get more milk out fine and doesn't seem to need a whole lot to go back to sleep anyway.

One other thing - I often get a 2nd letdown after 18-20 min of pumping, so you could try pumping a little longer if you're only getting 1 letdown per session.

I would agree that I bet it’s a growth spurt. I had the same thing happen around 6-7 months so just a little later than you. Even with some solids (wasn’t wild about them yet), he was still crying for more milk at the end of each bottle, according to daycare. I was already sending A LOT of milk in so this was hard to hear and understand! I checked in with my pediatrician about his daily intake to make sure he wasn’t underfed. (Daycare was encouraging me to increase the oz by a ton and I knew it wasn’t right but I needed support as a FTM. All the other babies in his room were FF so the oz would be different.) I checked in with daycare about paced feeding and also about what else could be making him unhappy. I increased bottles some (like one ounce each) even though, like you, it would have not been sustainable had he kept up that pace. My back-up plan was supplementing with formula even though I didn’t like the idea, but better him happy and fed than holding to my ideal. It turned out to be a non-issue and in hindsight, maybe I would have increased the bottles even more had I known it was just a growth spurt. A few weeks after in increasing bottles he backed off and started dropping ounces, especially as solids picked up a bit. I did add a pumping session for about a month just to get the supply back up and, in the end, I had enough supply until the end of bottle-feeding. We still nurse at 16 months at morning and night.

I bet it's growth. My first was HUGE and started eating some food at 5 months and that helped a lot. Their intake really should change that much at this point unless it's growth. I would also check the nipples. Breastfed babies expect it to take a while to eat and if they get a lot of milk quickly it can confuse them and they dont realize they should stop eating.