Please help me help my friend

[BibiJesus]

My best friend gave birth just over a week ago to her first, much wanted, baby. She stayed in hospital for 6 days and is feeding the baby herself, but since she has come home she really seems to be struggling.

The baby cries (which she cannot bear to hear even for a moment), she's having conflicting advice about getting him latched on properly, the baby's not into any kind of set feeding pattern, going from wanting a feed every hour and a half to sometimes going 5 hours between feeds and it's really wearing her out and getting her down.

I know lots of this is normal and feeling overwhelmed and stressed and very very tired comes with the territory, but I just feel she is struggling and I wish I could help.

I live 2 hours away and went to see her earlier this week and she looked shattered, was tearful and just seemed so overcome with it all I just wanted to take the baby off her fora couple of hours and give her a rest. I rang her last night and she just sounds so down and beaten basically. I'm trying to tread the fine line between being supportive and interfering, but I really don't know what else I can do from here.

Any help/advice would be appreciated!

[extremelychocolateymilkroll]

I really struggled with breastfeeding but found Claire Byam's DVD Breastfeeding Without Tears incredibly useful. Her book is What to Expect if You're Breastfeeding and What to Do if you Can't and has loads of useful about things other than breastfeeding as well. Are there any local breastfeeding counsellors she could go and see?

[KatieDD]

She needs to get in touch with the NHS or NCT breast feeding consellor asap and somebody needs to physically check everything is ok.
Her milk should be in by now so is she eating enough, is she resting enough ?
Taking the baby off her would be a bad idea I would say, it's everything else that needs dealing with so she can concerntrate on the baby, so go around and clean if you're going to do anything.

[extremelychocolateymilkroll]

Claire Byam Cook's advice was to latch the baby straight on rather than letting her find her own way with her nose which seems to be an NCT way of doing it. You need to make sure she sees someone good.

[Lotster]

You're very kind to care.

Do you have mutual friends who live nearer than you to her? Perhaps you could contact them and ask if they would give a bit of help. You need to be careful who - from my experience I didn't want men anywhere near me as I felt so low and looked so rough, I could only cope with "sisterhood" IYSWIM). (Although having said this, only one person brought us a casserole and that was a friend's husband!)

Perhaps if you could sort out an hour or two a week from other friends to take food, help clean, hold the baby for half an hour whilst she has a candlelit bath (unbelievably restorative IME), dog walk (?) etc, then she might feel more able to focus.

As much as baby blues are normal, and can last a few weeks, it's such a hard time and so important to take care of herself, eating and drinking properly. And a breastfeeding councellor is a brilliant suggestion - some have waiting lists, but will come to you for a private consultaion very quickly if she is prepared to pay for a session. Perhaps you could treat her as your way of helping...

[phraedd]

where is your friend based?

Would she consider getting in a doula to help for a few hours?

[BibiJesus]

Thank you all for your lovely replies, I think I will suggest to her/her husband about looking into a bf counsellor.

We have no mutual friends near her but I think I might order some takeaway from their local, pay over the phone and get it delivered...they'll like that, right?

I've asked them to come up next weekend for us to look after the pair of them and just hold the baby so she can give her arms a rest, and maybe a few hours out of the house will make her feel better.

Seeing the chaos in ours should make her feel more in control