My DS is 3 weeks old. We had a bit of a rocky start to feeding as my nipples very quickly became cracked and blistered. I reduced feeding directly from the breast and topped up with expressed/formula. Over the last ten days since my nipples healed I have increased the breastfeeding again and we are now on only one bottle a day. I think his latch is now OK as my nipples seem to be coping.
My question is around the flutter/comfort feeding at the end of a feed. He recently does this for a while, and seems to need it to be content after the feed and drift off to sleep. That's all fine, except he always looses his latch for the flutter suck and just wants to hang off my nipple! I try and relatch him, but once he's not hungry he just doesn't open his mouth wide enough to latch properly. So I end up with an unsettled wide awake baby because he hasn't done the flutter feeding, or a baby just sucking the end of my nipple.
I guess I want to know if this is normal or if I risk damaging my nipples again. It always feels very gentle - he does swallow a tiny bit but it certainly isn't the hard glugging sucks you get at the beginning, so I thought it might not be harmful to my nipple. It doesn't hurt at all at the time - sometimes after a long feed my nipples sting a tiny bit after but that could just be they haven't recovered 100% yet.
I tried him with a dummy but he seemed confused. I have no problem with him comfort feeding off me anyway, but I really don't want to undo all my hard work getting to this point!
I have an older DD but didn't make it past a week feeding her so feel a bit in the dark, especially with the lack of support groups and my HV isn't very helpful.