2 week old refusing/not feeding well from one breast

[Ginfilledcats]

Hi ladies,

I'm FTM and I have a 2 week old dd who for the last 2 days is refusing or struggling to feed from my R breast. She'll latch for 2-3 mins after a battle to get her latched in the first place. Then she either completely pulls away and refuses or falls asleep.

I'm getting 15-30 min feeds from the left breast and feeding regularly. But I'm concerned as she lost 10% of birth weight initially and whilst is gaining isn't back to birth weight yet so I'm concerned. I'm also concerned that her preference will cause either engorgement or lack of supply on the r side. Any advice?

Also she cluster feeds at night between 12 and 3 and am worried this will make those feeds even worse.

Help please!!

[Bellesavage]

You can feed one sided but it might make you lopsided so I would pump that side of you can.

Try the rugby ball hold too

Get to a lactation consultant if you can for a tongue tie assessment.

I would suspect torticollis. If it is torticollis then you need to see a peadeatric physio if you can. If not, Google torticollis baby exercises and there are NHS guides and videos on YouTube to follow. If you do the exercises at every change you can easily correct it. If it is torticollis then you need to correct it to avoid flat head and spinal issues as they over correct it. It's easy sorted if you have spotted it this early though

[Bellesavage]

Oh and baby will cry during the exercises but power through and it'll be fine. I hated doing them but it paid off and my boys neck was no longer tight on one side after a few weeks.

[BertieBotts]

Look up the rugby ball/football hold, and try using that on the boob she doesn't like, it mimics the position they're in on the other one so they can take to it better.

I would also query torticollis with the health visitor. When she lies down, newborns will usually roll their head to one side or another because the back of their skull sticks out, but it should be a random side rather than the same side all the time. Does she seem to have a preference for which way she looks when laid down?

[Ginfilledcats]

No she lies both ways to be honest lying down but will definitely ask about it and look into it! Thank you.

I tried rugby ball hold earlier and that went really really well actually. But then I think my milk came too fast for her as she struggled with it a bit and kept choking and crying. But for a while it went well! Much better

Thanks for your help

[BertieBotts]

Oh bless :) Probably just because she hasn't fed on that side for a while. If it happens again you can try expressing a little bit (just by hand is OK) into a muslin before you feed her just to take the pressure off a bit.

[crazychemist]

Try a few different positions (seconding rugby hold as others have mentioned). It might also just be that let down is slower on one side - I had this, and it took a while until DD was patient enough to wait, when she was tiny she would fuss as she expected instant milk!

[ZooKeeper19]

@Ginfilledcats my one flatly refused left breast at 3 months (now 8mo) and simply kept to right one. Right one now significantly larger. No other issues. I expressed for about 1,5 months from the left one but very little came out. I also tried coaxing him to keep on trying but he sucks 1-2 times and just screams so I just gave up.