Brestfeeding taking forever

[Hotpotpie]

Please excuse my one handed typing im feeding now

My daughter is 8 days old and we have had problems feeding from the start. She had a tongue tie cut yesterday which has improved matters but she is taking over an hour at a time to feed, is this normal? and is there anything I can do to speed her up? she is no sooner off than she is back on again - my poor nipples feel ready to drop off

Congrats! And yes this sounds pretty normal to me. I used to constantly feed my DD, all day every day for the first months. We wore a groove in the sofa, and in the end I didn't give a hoot about anything except holding her and feeding her. I read a lot of history books and listened to radio 4. It was a lovely time.

What helped me speed the process up a little bit though, was expressing and feeding her with a bottle avent slow teat and then a nuk slow teat.
My DC has a large tongue and was a tongue thruster and had a crap latch and pull, and feeding expressed milk with a slow teat really helped her get the hang of latching and sucking. HTH and well done so far!

Firstly, congrats!

With having the tongue tie cut, it's like she is learning to latch all over again. It will just take a bit of time for her to work it all out again and hopefully speed up her extracting the milk.

Dd had hers snipped on day 6 and I just recall those next few days being painful and exhausting. I got mastitis too as I skipped a feed off one boob as it was hurting so much (so don't do that!). Once dd sussed 'how' to feed again, she was an expert at feeding within 15 minutes (I think we were lucky and this isn't the norm!)

Oh and lansinoh cream (spelling?)

Plaster is on your nips, it does help. And take paracetomol if the pain is becoming unbearable, it'll just take the edge off.

Also remember that there is a 10 day/2 week growth spurt - she could be feeding more for that...

Hope you feel better soon.

thanks ladies, I get to night times and I just want to give up, then I think of all the effort Ive put in so far and it seems daft not to persevere, she started really well this morning but 50 mins later here we still are, shes dozing away on my breast and every time I decide to move her she wakes and starts feeding again shes cheeky thats for sure

On the plus side she slept from 2.30 last night so Ive had a few hours kip and my nipples are a lot better today :)

DD had her tongue tie done last week - she immediately started feeding all the time to catch up!

Previously I'd had to wake her for nearly every feed as she was so tired from struggling with each feed.

She did then gain 4oz in less than 48 hours after the TT was done (from slow weight gain of 1-3oz a week before then) - so take heart, hopefully your LO is just having a growth spurt too!

hotpotpie well done for persevering!

It is amazing and has so many benefits for you both, and once it's established it does get easier. People told me to try and get to 6-7 weeks and if it was still difficult / painful / baby wasn't content then to reconsider options. And about 6.5 weeks it all just 'clicked' and got easier very quickly, nipples recovered and supply evened out etc Dd is 8.5 months and we're still going strong

If you can get yourself of a baby/bf cafe you may find it useful just to be around others in RL going through the same. I found them invaluable - the first one I was nervous just walking in, but someone had dd off me (lots of coo's at a newborn), someone else handed me a hot and toast and someone gave up their chair for me to sit down and have a cry! They were just so lovely. I still go every week now and I'm the one making tea and toast for the new mums walking in !

I'm glad you have got some sleep. Just come on here if you need to rant/cry/scream!