Hi all, I'm a brand-new mum, with my little one a week old tomorrow. He was in intensive care for a day or so as his blood sugar was very low, and he was bottle fed formula to give him a boost. After he came out of special care, I bottle fed him expressed milk after attempting, and failing, to latch him on.
We had a bit of a eureka moment on our last day in hospital, when he suddenly became more interested in the breast and latched on, albeit briefly. The next couple of days followed the same pattern - I would try and latch him on, he would take a few sucks and come off, and, being worried about his blood sugar dropping again, I topped him up with a bottle of my expressed milk.
Yesterday, we got him latched on for the first time properly, in the laying-down position and I was thrilled we had cracked it. He fed absolutely fine for the next few feeds with no need for the bottle of expressed milk. However, now he doesn't seem to be able to latch on properly - he sometimes can do it for a few seconds but then stops for some reason and comes off. I'm sure it's to do with my positioning and the fact that I'm still as nervous as all hell about holding him, making sure his head is supported, etc - I tense up and that's never useful - even in the laying down position we can't seem to come together properly.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting from writing this... I am desperate to exclusively breast feed, it's so important to me, and it breaks my heart when the little one is wriggling and rooting around and crying yet I can't seem to be where he needs me to be - spent the evening bawling my eyes out, which again is never helpful... I know he is only teeny tiny, but he was unable to latch on after a bit of a difficult birth and I feel like I'm almost on a deadline to make sure he can latch on before he gets too used to the bottle. I only got a few seconds of initial skin-to-skin with him when he was born, as he needed a bit of help.
I guess I'm just looking for a little advice and support, if possible. Is this a normal thing to be going through?
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Breastfeeding - could anyone offer me advice?
43 replies
gogoNagano · 24/07/2011 03:00
OP posts:
Loopymumsy ·
24/07/2011 08:17
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