5 weeks and he's lost his latch!!

[nearlymumofone]

Hi,

WOnder if anyone can help. I've EBF my 5 and a half week old. At 3 weeks I started to introduce the odd (every 3 days or so) bottle of expressed breast milk. He took to this fine, and was fine when he went back on the breast too- it seemed he could easily switch between the both. However. Last week I gave a bottle of expressed breast milk then the following day in the evening (so about 6 feeds after he had had the bottle) he could not latch on to the breast, this continued for 3 feeds, which was extremely stressful for the both of us, he was very upset and couldn't get the latch right (he wasn't doing anything with his bottom lip). Since then he has improved but still doesn't seem to find it as easy as he used to to latch on (it used to be effortless for him). Is the cause of this the introduction of the bottle (even though after previous bottle feeds there was not this problem?) or could it be something else?

Any ideas? I'm uinsure where to try the bottle again now, although I planned to EBF for 6 months, and really wanted the option to give this for a bit of freedom (as I don't feel comfortable breast feeding in public).

Many thanks!

Check inside his mouth for thrush. That used to make ds1 not latch v well

Also, could be that as he's got bigger you need to look at your holding/ positioning. Make sure his head is not in yr armpit and he's still positioned tummy to mummy nipple to nose

I really would doubt that the few bottles you introduced once bf was established and latch ok would cause this

Thanks for your advice. Will do that.

It can take longer than 5 weeks to establish bf properly, so I would think the bottles may have affected the latch. It's worth starting again with positioning and attachment, and leaving off the bottles for a few more weeks.

We had this problem with DS when he was 5 weeks - it felt like he'd got his latch sorted so we gave him a tiny bottle of ebm before each feed with colic meds in, but it did affect his latch after all.