6 week old struggling to latch

[varicoseveined]

My DS was born 5 weeks early but took to BFing easily despite being in NICU. He was bottle fed EBM on a 4 hourly schedule then and we were advised to top up with EBM to boost his weight. As soon as he came home I woke him to feed evry 2-3 hours and he's put on 3lbs since birth :)

The last couple of weeks I ditched the one bottle he was getting in the evening as I felt he was starting to get nipple confusion. He simply won't open wide to latch on and he gets very frustrated. Sometimes he'll latch fairly easily. What can I do to get him to open wide? I'm finding it hard to keep calm myself!

Also instead of waking every 2-3 hours to feed, he'll sleep for 4 hours in the day, I can't remember what my DD (aged 3) did! Is this ok? Or should I still wake him for feeds until a certain age?

Please forgive me if I sound muddled, I'm a bit emotional and sleep deprived

Oh and by the way, sometimes he'll feed for just 5 mins, and fall asleep if it's taken a while to latch on, thus feeding my worries he may not get milk, though he does produce a lot of wet/dirty nappies. Is that normal at this stage? And when can I reintroduce EBM for others to give me a little break?

DD didn't open her mouth wide to feed either..she was diagnosed with tongue tie and had it snipped - it made feeding much better, but we're still working on getting latch right. See here for info www.tonguetie.co.uk/

i would try to get some advice from a breast feeding counsellor Contact your health visitor to ask if you don't know who it is locally They can see you and assess Ds latch and look for things like tongue tie.

If he's weeing well and having dirty nappies it sounds like he's getting enough That and his good weight gain. But sounds like you need some rl reassurance and support.

Best of luck

Scubamummy Thanks for the link on tongue tie! When DD was born the midwife said that's what she had but nothing could be done about it . I didn't have web access at the time so didn't check. Thankfully I was able to BF her until she was 2.

bumble34 - I'm going to try to get to a breastfeeding support group this week and see if I can get an opinion on his latch there :)