My 9 day old baby fed well for the first 4 days but on day 5 was sleepy and jaundiced and fed very badly (pulling off, halfhearted sucking, getting tired and sleeping a lot) and by the time the Midwife did or check that afternoon was onbviously dehydrated. We have been supplementing using pumped milk and some formula, however now it’s not so much supplementing as he is very reluctant to feed from the breast at all now. As it’s been so hot and he’s so small and was jaundiced I was reluctant to push it too much in case of dehydration/weight loss (I try at the beginning of every feed but he quickly gets frustrated and wound up so I’ve been giving the bottle fairly quickly) but now he’s 9 days old and I think looks visibly chunkier (weigh in tomorrow) I’m scared he’ll never take the boob. For example I’m in bed skin to skin with him now and he’s refused to latch on one breast, cries a bit when I try too much, latched onto one breast and have about a minute of on and off sucking and then licked it a bit before closing his eyes and going back to sleep. This is pretty much all feeds. I don’t know what to do about building it up and also he often will just sit with the nipple in his mouth and not latch. I had a visit from BF support advisor and she said positioning and latch were all fine (he actually fed a bit still then so she saw it) and that when he was bigger and stronger he should get a full feed out... but now I’m not sure. She did not recommend stopping too ups as obviously he’s very little and it’s so hot etc he does need frequent feeds. But then it’s so hard to find the time window to really attempt to get him feeding from the breast.
Has anyone tried using a supplemental feeding system? There is a Medela one which has thin tubes to tape to the breast which delivers supplement milk next to the nipple. Only issue that seems like a huge faff and I have another child to look after as well so I can’t just sit all day trying to feed DS2...
I don’t know how hard I should make him work for it really, I know why he’s not feeding from the breast (it’s too hard and he’s forgetting how to latch) but I can’t just force him to do it (so frustrating to sit with a nipple in his face/mouth that he just sees as an annoyance before he gets properly fed). I have very large breasts and initially my nipple was massive in his mouth but using Rugby ball hold we were getting over that issue.
Any advice would be much appreciated. (I really can’t just bf