DS is almost 7 weeks. We still haven't managed to fully establish breastfeeding. He struggled to latch from day one which caused me huge amounts of pain and made him very frustrated. At about 3 weeks he would only latch with a nipple shield and this made it bearable for me.
Turns out he had a posterior tongue tie and this was snipped on Monday. We've been trying to wean off the shields since then but it's like we are back in week one.
Today is the first day he has latched with minimal pain. Yesterday it was excruciating. Mostly used shields. Now its still sore and my nipple is still misshapen but I've been working on trying to encourage him to bring his tongue forwards. He is gulping more often and isn't clicking but still does a lot of sucking.
Tonight it's been a disaster. He latches, feeds for a few minutes, throws his head back whilst clamped on my nipple and then howls and howls. I keep swapping sides, re latching but the only thing that works is putting a shield back on. He calms down instantly and I can hear him gulping.
Is there any way of losing the shields now? My supply isn't brilliant so I was hoping we could start increasing it with a view to stopping the formula top ups once BF was established. I tried expressing over the last few weeks but he's permanently attached to me and we were only getting 20 to 30 mins between feeds. Last week he dropped from the 25th to the 9th centile so I know if this doesn't improve we will be advised to keep increasing the formula.
Any advice would be welcomed.. We want a happy and well fed household!