3 day old DS1 - struggling to feed, please help stop my heart from breaking :(

[MrsCog]

DS1 who is perfect is 3 days old, the delivery was fairly straight forward, (ventouse for the last final couple of pushes, but showed no signs of distress throughout delivery). We were in hospital for a couple of days and although there was 'help' with bf in hindsight it was disjointed and varied and no on actually ever showed me what to do.

Anyway, my heart is breaking as having set my heart on bf I am really really struggling. He doesn't want to latch on - he can suck, he gives feeding cues (hands in mouth, smacking lips etc) but doesn't actually open his mouth wide when I rub my nipple on. Seen the community midwife today and the local bf consultant who were both great, and made me feel as though I'm doing the right thing (trying to feed from breast but feeding with expressed milk (which I've got loads of - it's come in) via syringe to actually get some food in to him. They both said my positioning of DS was good - annoyingly he was very placid when they were here, and so they saw him latch on, and the breastfeeding support worker got him on for a 15 min feed (in hindsight, the only proper feed he's had from me). I now can't replicate this - DS just gets really cross when I try and latch him on, and flails his hands (scratching his face :() and screams uncontrollably. I've tried skin to skin, but although he clearly loves it, he just sleeps - if I try rousing him to feed before he's ravenous he still gets cross when I try and latch him on, if I wait until he wakes properly to feed he's too ravenous to try.

I've set my heart on BF - and it's so frustrating that I have no supply issues, DS has the right 'skills' and the support worker said my approach was fine, it seems so fruitless to fail, however, I'm already terrified that I'm heading for failure.

Can anyone help me? I might not reply straight away as I'm going for a sleep now (I'm shattered), but I'd appreciate any advice/encouragement.

Thanks :)

Im sorry you are experiencing this. Please keep trying, your dc will pick it up. I m sure someone else will post soon with better advice than me...

Just incase it may help, when my first was born we really struggled to latch on properly. I was in hospital for 5 days and it took this entire time to sort it out. One thing I did to get him to latch on in the end was to give him my finger to suck for a couple of seconds and quickly then offer my breast. It seemed to 'remind' him what he was supposed to be doing. Like you've said, all the instincts were there, it was just case of completing the process.

I wish you the best of luck with this and congratulations on your baby!

My DD couldn't latch on at first. I expressed with a double pump, lots of times a day, and we bottle fed her that when not at the breastfeeding clinic. This kept her weight up, my supply up and after 5 weeks she was able to latch on. I did have excellent support at the BF clinic. It is possible. Hopefully someone will have better advice soon, but that's what worked for us.

Have you tried swaddling to keep his arms out the way when latching him on?

Breastfeeding is a learned skill for both of you, if you keep trying it will come right, honestly. Just like when you learned to drive, write, knit etc - you couldn't do it but you tried and practised and then you could and breastfeeding is absolutely no different. Is anyone coming to see you tomorrow? Also try and get out to a bf group, just keep getting people to show and help you and it WILL click.

it must be very hard what you are going through. At least ds is still getting your breast milk even if it is not from direct breast feeding. All you can do is offer him the breast and hopefully he will get it soon. I know bf is what you had your heart set on but dont beat yourself up if it doesn't work. Youve done a great job already and given him the best start in life.

You aren't "heading for failure"! You have a tiny baby and both you and he are learning together this new activity. There is lots to learn for both of you and it is totally normal that it should take a while. People talk about 'establishing bf' and allow 4 weeks or so for that- so early days yet, don't panic, be kind to yourself and patient. My DD is 5 weeks old and it is only this week that she has latched on without help, when she was tiny it took more than ten attempts to get a good latch at the start of a feed -and then she would slip off and we would have to start again! Lots of patience and self-confidence needed, plus RL advice from a bf counsellor and/or the helplines. Wishing you many congrats and keep persevering!!

Definitely try swaddling for the flailing arms, it was the only way I could get dd1 to latch on when she was a newborn. With dd2 dh used to hold her arms still while she latched on.

Have you tried biological nurturing? Google it, it's a way of letting the baby latch on themselves and really worked for us.

Just dashing out, but agree with Rita about biological nurturing. Try not to force things or hold the head as it may be sore after the forceps. Maybe visit a cranial osteopath to check this out?

Swaddling is often seen as helpful in keeping the arms out of the way, but not all agree- see this great article here for more details.

One final thought- have a baby with your baby and see if that helps.

hope things get better soon.

Biological nurturing can be very good as it helps the baby's feeding reflexes to work with you to bf but those same bfing reflexes can work against you if you are sitting upright with baby horizontal across your body (arms flailing, head bobbing/woodpeckering, shaking head, etc).

Have a look at the Biological Nurturing website by Suzanne Colson (MW & PhD Dr) as it has videos of biological nurturing so you can see how the feeding reflexes help.

All good advice already. Think crikey might have meant have a bath with your baby as this may encourage him to nurse.

You sound like you're doing great - don't lose heart just yet. My DS was a shocking feeder & my milk didn't come in for 3/4 days so I can sympathise. To keep up your supply & ensure your DS gets enough fluid, I'd recommend expressing (by hand or with a pump) every 2 hours and feeding him with a syringe, on top of keeping on trying to bf.

It's hard work but this did work with my DS until he got the hang of things. Also, he got jaundice as such a poor feeder so this approach also resolved that (jaundice makes 'em sleepy so they feed less; feeding less means the bilirubin in the blood, which is what causes jaundice, builds up - a vicious circle).

DS latched on fine as well - it was so frustrating. In the end, he got it and I stopped expressing and went on to feed him for 12 months.

Also, I think the NCT has a specialist support line for bf-ing - check their website. They can give you telephone advice.

Keep at it, you have my sympathy.

Have emailed you but wanted to say you are a splendid person and he will be fine-believe it will work and it will ( and be willing to bottle feed if need be-it's not the devil!!). Big kiss from a very unanonamous Liz bob! Xx

Oh, meant to say: you should be able to get syringes from your pharmacist. They use them for giving little ones medicines (when too small to take a spoon).

Didn't want to read and run,but i can only really agree with the wise mners who have already replied. Please don't break your heart over this it's only been a few days i think it normally takes about four weeks to get breast feeding established. It's really easy to put yourself under lots of pressure to get things perfect but breast feeding is a skill that takes time for you both to master. You're doing a great job and remember that even if you do choose formula feed it doesn't make you a bad mum (that would be not feeding at all) I know the arm waving is a nuisance but i'm sure they do that to help your let down reflex so he's probably just practicing , i'm not an expert though.Wishing you luck with your gorgeous boy.

Hi everyone, thank you for your replies.

As I suspected when he was weighed today he had lost nearly 15% of his bodyweight and so we are now doing topping up feeds with a sippy cup, which DS has taken to well.

I am upset at the situation as I can now see that the 'advice'/help I was given in hospital was not helpful and I wasn't given the information I needed, for example we started topping up yesterday, but when the community midwife came today she said that we hadn't given him nearly enough :( No one at any point had ever told us how much milk to give him!

The good news is, is that my milk has come in, and there is quite a lot of it so the top ups are pretty much all breast milk so DS is getting the benefits of having breast milk. The community mw is still very supportive of trying to get bf going (and I have to keep reminding myself he is still only 5 days old!) and so the support worker is coming out again next week. In the meantime, I need to try and keep latching him on/skin to skin etc. Now he is getting the correct amount of food (!) he is much calmer so who knows, maybe he'll get stuck in. However, I'm kind of worried the flow won't be very satisfying for him after the cup!

I'm trying to keep cheerful anyway and also not dwell on mistakes I can see I made in hospital :(

My DD was like this, and it did all work out in the end. It took many more days for it to 'come good' and when it did she put on weight just fine.

TbH she slept for the first day anyway, and I should have been sleeping too instead of fussing on like I was told to do.

Well done and good luck.

Congratulations on the birth of your baby. Do you have a DP/H who could help? When I got home from hospital DH latched DD on for the first 36 odd hours. He had a better view iyswim and it felt like we needed two pairs of hands! He'd watched the midwives and advisors try to help and just 'got it'. I'm sure that's a lot to do with the full nights of sleep he'd had while I was in hospital!

Very quickly DD and I learnt what to do.... DH holding her on and helping had allowed us enough feeds for us both to understand what we were aiming for.

Glad you've got some help now MrsCog.

It's so hard isn't it with all the conflicting advice from the mws. . Obviously having lost that amount of weight, he will need to get extra milk in to him but the amount can be a hard one to get right... too much and he will just be too full to attempt any feed at the breast. Too little and he will lack the energy to try.

The good thing is that you are protecting your milk supply by expressing- hopefully you can manage to do that about 8-10 times a day.

Have you been able to discuss with anyone what may have caused such a big weight loss to start with?

Oh and one last thing- you absolutely did not make mistakes in hospital. If anyone made mistakes, it was the midwives who failed to give you useful and consistent advice.

How are you getting on now MrsCog?

Hi Crikey - thanks so much for coming back,

We're doing okish in that once I was told how much to top DS up with, I started expressing like a maniac and on Friday DH and I gave top up feeds in a cup every 2 hrs. This had the desired effect as by |Saturday he'd gained 50g and was down to only a 10% weight loss.

In hindsight, it is so clear to me how he lost so much, day 1 - we did the immediate skin to skin, he semi latched on throught the day and I had loads of colostrum which I was told to hand express and feed with a syringe if he was too sleepy/reluctant to latch, repeat for day 2 (when we were meant to be discharged). Day 3 our discharge from hospital was delayed unecessarily and I got myself very hot and worked up and stressed (desparate to be home) and was discouraged by DS not latching on very well and also getting very cross when I tried to latch him on. We finally got him home and he didn't feed at all well and I syringed my colostrum to him that night. He continued not to latch so early on day 4 I sent DH out in a panic to get some formula to syringe feed as there was a bit of a delay in hand expressing colostrum and my milk coming in so we gave that to DS before the comm mw came around.

The community midwife could see we were having trouble with the latch etc. but as we said we were happy to top up with my bm if it came in and also formula as long as we could syringe to help preserve breast feeding she said she was happy. The problem was that me and DH had no idea that DS needed so much more than on days 1 & 2 so we were only giving him top ups of 10 ml at a time, Hence day 5 = big weight loss. Thankfully quickly reversed, but still very traumatic, especially with DC1.

So this weekend I've expressed a lot, DS is now virtually ebf but via a cup. He's much stronger and happier and seems not to have lost his desires to bf (I've done skin to skin and he's still interested in the boob, and he still roots when I cuddle him etc.). I am desparately hoping that this week with the help of the breastfeeding consultant (who is great) that we can maybe still crack this.

Does anyone think it's possible? The LLL website says most babies will latch by week 4 as long as you keep your baby healthy and your supply going. Is this really true?

THanks

Keep going its a new skill for both of you. I found if I stayed still and DH put his arms round me and supported DD's head and helped her get to the nipple I had less problems. I think I needed that help for at least a week. Otherwise when I moved my arm my boob moved and I felt liked was chasing a moving target.

Also, has he been checked for a tongue tie?

You doing brilliantly well done. And yes the 4 weeks thing is true, I waited far too long before I saw a bf support worker and was told by mw to ' just keep wxprwssing' thankfully at 4 weeks I met the bf councillor and ds was bf from then till 9 months with no problems. It will happen just keep trying and keep asking for help.

Glad he's putting on the weight now MrsCog- sounds like he's doing much better now.

Absolutely doable to get him on the breast at this stage- I've heard of some women getting their baby latched on months down the line.

Have a look at the biological nurturing site if you get a mo- really useful stuff.

Hope things go well when you see the bf councillor.

I've not had this experience but I'd say it's definitely fine by week 4. It sounds like you're doing a great job.
DS had a tongue tie that wasn't picked up till he was 6 weeks old. He gained weight, but I was sore, he kept losing the latch and knew something was right. He had it snipped at 13 weeks. He's 21 weeks now and I'd say it's only in the past 3 weeks that I've felt we've really got it.... and now he's got teeth so keeps biting me!

Good luck and keep persevering. It's worth it in the long run.

This all sounds very familiar - went through all this myself with DD who is now 7 weeks and feeding well - in fact she's just come off the boob and is snoozing contentedly against it.

Best advice I can give you is to just spend loads of time with your baby, snuggling her and offering the breast whenever she seems hungry, even if you then cup feed her.

I posted here at the time, feeling fairly desperate about it, and later that night woke up to find DD, who'd been sleeping on my chest, determinedly wriggling down me to get to my boobs, where she latched herself on and settled in for a long feed. She looked so pleased with herself afterwards for having conquered Mount Boob!

Even after that it took a couple of days before we properly cracked it, but then it just suddenly clicked and we've never looked back.

Keep getting help - I had a couple of sessions with a bf consultant, one with a lovely community midwife and a couple of phone sessions with a helpline, all of which helped to increase my confidence and encourage me to keep going.

I'm sure it'll happen if you keep doing what you're doing but you know what? If it doesn't, your baby will do well anyway, because she has a lovely, devoted mum who clearly adores her, and that's what really matters.

Good luck!