Positive vibes thread for mums with BF problems

[Zara1984]

Hi all

My DS is 6 days old and BF is not going great. Having difficulty getting him to latch, he's on expressed breast milk. The immediate fog of distress has lifted but I'm still sometimes feeling confident I'll be able to get him on the boob, but other times feeling like a failure :( like right now :(

I thought I would start a positive vibes thread for other ladies who are having problems. Like listing stuff we are doing that is awesome. Here is my pathetic list:

• despite a rough start my DS is now giving lots of wet dirty nappies from all the expressed milk I'm giving him
• my DS looks at me with so much I love I know he really doesn't care how I feed him, he just wants to be close to me all the time
• I had a shower and brushed my hair today
• he managed to latch and suck for 30 minutes today with mw help!!
• I sent a super-positive pep talk/confidence boosting text to my boss whose wife had a cs today and I know would be feeling terrified.

Sorry my list is not very long... but you get the idea....

Great idea Zara! Well done for all the good stuff and for persevering.

My DS is 19 days old today. BF is going quite well generally but milk flows too fast from left boob making him splutter and get angry and he tends to chomp on right boob so I have to get him off & re-latched several times, so either side can be a stressful experience. My positioning can be poor too. I'm going to go to a breastfeeding group next week & hope to get some tips.

Other than that, DS is a pretty content baby & is asleep in a heap on my chest as I type this on my phone.

I just got him to latch for 15 minutes!!! Ok it took 15 minutes to get him on, but never mind. 2 x latches today! Victory!!!!

welovecouscous the clearing out his digestive system/mucus is a big one as he had to get suctioned due to bad meconium aspiration and has been very very mucusy. The hospital reckoned that's why he didn't even want to feed at first because his tummy was full of mucus so he thought he was full (on Tuesday he went 8 hours at one point without eating, despite me trying for hours and hours anything I could to wake him up and get him to latch - had to be fed a cup of formula by mw).

To anybody struggling with breastfeeding, please read this here and have your babies checked for tongue and lip tie.

There is a woeful lack of knowledge out there amongst hcps about ties, and it means that many ties are going undiagnosed. It seems that many mothers have to take it upon themselves to push the issue.

Many of us on MN have been told that there is no tie, only to find out later that there actually is.

There are some experts out there, it's just not easy to find them!!

I had an awful, awful start to breast feeding - took me ages to work out how to latch, bleeding nipples, thrush, appalling pain but, after eight weeks, and lots of specialist support, I finally started feeling like I was getting somewhere. Five months on, and I'm pretty sure it's one of the things I'm proudest of in my life so far. For what will probably, in the scheme of things, be a pretty small sacrifice of my comfort, sleep and time, I'm giving my child the best possible start he can have. Those of us that persevere are in the overwhelming minority. Smug face, girls, and keep going!

PS Having to p*ss about with bottles for the first time now for DS to take to nursery. What a freakin' PITA!!! Trust me - KEEP GOING. It is (or at least will get) so much easier to get the boobs out!

PPS Your best friends while cluster feeding.

Zara WELL BLOODY DONE and keep going! I had to cup feed DS EBM for the first week due to latch problems, there were times when I thought my heart was going to split in two because I was so desparate to breast feed and although I'd anticipated long hours sitting feeding, possible pain etc. I hadn't for a second thought that DS just wouldn't latch! Well, after a few weeks we got it all sorted, and I EBF for 6 months, he's 8 months this Monday and I'm still feeding him and it's great. Keep going, you're doing fab. :)

Still in pain at nearly 12 weeks have had TT cut once going do second cut on Tuesday. I love feeding her despite the pain and crying! But she is healthy and putting on weight :) (but won't take a bottle at all! So she knows what's good for her).

Next step is to deal with the fast let down which chokes her every so often!

This is a good idea for a thread. My baby is ten days old and at the start we had trouble, just not interested in feeding (syringe fed colostrum in hospital), then next evening at home wouldn't feed, tried for hours, tried cup feeding expressed milk which didn't work, had to go back to hospital to get help from midwife to latch on. Now having problems with bad latch on right hand breast, really painful cracked nipple, good advice from phone helpline but really anxious about it all going wrong again. Hardly slept since labour started. Exhausted.

Yesterday DS latched for 4 feeds in total, which I am so pleased about! But it feels really hit and miss - for the other feeds he just will not have a bar of it.

The thing I'm struggling with right this second is where he makes feeding cues, but won't wake up (I try all the usual things eg undressing, tickling feet). Should I wait until his eyes are open (even where he's been restlessly making feeding faces for past half hour?)?

He's learning just as much as you are Zara, possibly even more so because he doesn't have the problem solving skills you have. Just keep working on eliciting his feeding instincts by using skin to skin. I've not done it myself, but a lot of people swear by biological nurturing to help with babies who aren't good latchers. Google will reveal all if the idea hasn't been presented to you already.

KEEP GOING! You're doing an amazing thing for you and your baby.

Well done to everyone battling pain and exhaustion. In just a few months everything will feel 100 times easier than it feels right now. If any of you feel up to it and have a helpful DP or mum to hand, would you consider a bath with your baby? It's just lovely and really gets the milk flowing plus you get washed at the same time - result! You don't have to feed in the bath, you could feed when you get out.

Great idea, Curtsey

and are videos of the latching techniques I swear by in case you find them helpful.

Ps if you do the bath thing get DP to take a photo, it's beyond cute. Really helps a baby to settle too.

In the photos DP took of me and DD you can see the milk gushing out

Great thread! It is hard, but at no time did I ever consider stopping as I see it as a lifetime of benefits for a bit of discomfort that passes. I struggled with latch at first and had to express colostrum, and then had mastitis in week two, but we are now at week 6 and it's pretty easy...aside from occasional fast let down when I feel so sorry for the little mite! Feeding while lying on my back helps with that...although I admit that's a tad impractical when out and about. I now love BF as the bond I have with ds is so special and knowing I'm the only one who can give him what he needs is an amazing feeling.

Great idea for a thread. Smicha I'm glad to hear it's going well.

I'm having a different problem in that 8-day-old DS latches on ok (often slips a bit at the end of a feed and chomps my nipples though, ouch) and seems to enjoy it, he looks healthy and well but has lost more weight than he should so mws want me to top up with formula, 3 x 90mls a day. I don't really want to so trying to express and encourage more milk to avoid this but it's getting me down a bit.

However I was thinking this morning about three things that keep me going and make me so blimmin happy I could melt:

1. The way he raises his eyebrows when trying to latch on as if he thinks it will help him open his mouth a bit wider.

1. When he makes eye contact during a feed and we just gaze at each other.

1. When he finishes a feed by smacking his lips, resting his head on my breast and throwing a proprietorial arm over it before falling asleep.

Makes it all worth it!

blonder those are great things!!! I know exactly what you mean, my DS does the same and when he does it feels like I've won the lottery!!

He latched for one 20 min feed this morning, and mw helped me with a modified rugby ball hold which is great! Before that on-boob feed he had taken 60ml expressed in a bottle.... And after nursing promptly threw up about 50ml ....

Things I am grateful for today:

• he doesn't seem so scared/frustrated by boob anymore - he won't always latch but is definitely trying
• his sucking is getting stronger when he does latch!

Seems like when he's very sleepy having a bit of expressed first helps wake him up sufficiently to give nursing a good go.

blonder the mw today said she thought my milk production might be a bit low and told me to take iron tabs to help it? She mentioned this particularly b/c she saw me during late pregnancy and said today I looked very pale and drawn in comparison

Hi ladies, great thread!

DS, 7 days, started out ok in that he loved the nipple but it was really painful. Now it's not painful, he doesn't want it! He cries, pulls and pushes away, opens his mouth for a scream rather than the nipple...it's heart-wrenching and so hard to keep forcing my nipple on him.

I think it might have made him a bit lazy expressing into bottles? We also had to syringe colostrom into his mouth so along with bottling breast milk just to keep him fed, I suppose he doesn't understand he also has to work to get milk out? I bought some slow flow teats for when we use bottles.

It's so hard but this kind of thread keeps me going.

My positives.... she has had her TT dealt with yesterday, we have visitors so I cannot make a song and dance about how depressing I find BF so, it is a bit less depressing funnily enough! She has not started to cluster feed yet! I am going to a BF cafe on Monday and hope to meet mums to cry with :D

blonder has your baby been checked for tongue tie? Those are the symptoms my DS had with his, the slipping off, chomping, not opening his mouth etc. I practically held him on my boobs for weeks! Improved massively once I got it sorted.

It is so hard in the beginning but is easy peasy once you get it established & really worth preserving with.

Also have you tried offering more feeds and switch nursing? You can top the baby up with breast milk this way if you want to avoid formula.

Hello :D

This is a rather good sort of thread.

My baby is 6 weeks old today and we have had a terrible time of feeding. Just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. During the first day he was too sleepy to feed so he had to be fed colostrum by syringe to get him started. He was jaundiced, not too badly but enough to affect things a little I think. For some reason he just would not accept a good latch, so feeding was agony for a very long time. I had lipstick shaped nipples, he managed to chomp a lump of flesh out of one...it sort of oozed out. The other side then developed a huge crack which is still there but getting better. I say crack, my nipple is almost more wound than skin. Ended up going to a wonderful breastfeeding clinic where the lovely midwife there diagnosed us with thrush which was contributing to the agony and nipple damage. Unfortunately even with trying out different positions, biological nurturing and such the wee one's latch didn't improve much. My darling partner brought home a stomach bug, which of course, he passed on to me, and I suspect DS; he had a few quite sleepy days at that point. At 3 weeks he'd gone from 8.2 lbs down to 7.8lbs and was feeding for at least an hour at a time, quite badly so we started topping him up with expressed milk. He then put on a little weight, and latch improved a bit even though it was still painful some of the time.

Then I went and got a blocked duct and I think mastitis with a very feverish night or two when I could barely lift him up to feed him :(. After that he went through a period of refusing to feed and spending a lot of time shouting at the breast, which I worked through by trickery (skin to skin and getting him sucking on my thumb before quickly swapping for a boob). I don't know if he went off the taste of my milk or if he was frustrated because my supply dipped, who knows :( He'd also been rejecting my right side because let's say it has erectile dysfunction.  Anyway things were not going well and it was a bit heart breaking that he seemed to prefer a plastic thing over me. For some reason or other after that he seemed to get the hang of things and became happy to take a lot more breast into his mouth, even managing the bad side a bit better :D 

Terrible mother that I am, I felt like I'd come out the other side of the hard times and I cut down on the top ups a bit to far. When he was weighed on Tuesday he'd lost all the weight he'd put on and gone back down to 7.8lbs again :(. However, he has grown in head measurements and I think length, but he was looking quite skinny. I cried over it for an hour or so, then I got proactive, ordered an electric breast pump and some scales to set my mind at rest and started on a majorly intensive feeding spree, breast feeding on demand, expressing when I can and giving him a bit of formula on top. 

If anyone's made it this far I weighed him today after he'd done a big poo and he is only 8 grams off his birth weight, so he has put on a pack of butter over 4 days and I am very chuffed :D