How to finish a breastfeed?

[GreenDogDot]

Just a few days in to breastfeeding and it’s going relatively well in terms of supply and latch but I’m struggling with how to draw a line under a feed.

At the moment she will feed for anything from 10 mins to about 2 hours in the early hours, when she’s ‘finished’ she’ll fall asleep and unlatch, I then sit her up to burp her and she’ll wake up and start rootling around on my hand so I re-latch her, she has two or three sucks and falls off asleep, burp, rootle, repeat. If you ignore the rootling and try to skip straight to soothing her to sleep she’ll thrash around screaming and sucking her hands indefinitely. Sometimes passing her to husband breaks the cycle but that’s not always possible and doesn’t always work anyway.

She seems to have very good ‘I’m hungry’ cues, very bad ‘I’m full’ cues!

Any thoughts on how to convince her to continue on one path or the other?!

ETA: She does need to be burped, if you skip that bit it also results in thrashing and sick-ups.

Possibly a bit early for you, but we introduced a dummy after a week or so and this was really helpful. We only offered it once we were into that 3 sucks then nod off bit of the feed. Then cuddle into a deep sleep.

Remember that the on-off feeding is v normal in the early days, it's essential to building your suppy. So you might just have to grin and bear it for a while longer! You'll get more confident in reading baby's cues over the next days and weeks for sure.

How old is she? How is her weight gain going?

She’s a week today, she spent the first three days in the NICU on a drip and then we basically had one night to crack feeding before they put an NG tube in which we managed to do but I’m sure my technique and finesse is horrible!

As of a week she’s only lost 3.9% of her birth weight so she is definitely being fed!

Sounds normal for a 1.week old. Find yourself a local support group and get some extra support with latch as she shouldn't really need burping if she's latched correctly. She's so tiny and new she won't want to be anywhere else so won't be giving quite the same satiety cues, just cues of "let me stay here where I am safe"!

That's very normal for a 1 week old. She'll be building your supply. A one day olds stomach is 5ml and a one week olds is 50ml. They spent the first few weeks feeding and sleeping on the boob.

Would this help?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2JVwo3D72cc

@GreenDogDot You're obviously doing absolutely brilliantly. My advice? Just go with the flow as much as you can at the moment. She is working at building up your supply and growing. Just try to lean into it. Feed for as long as she wants-don't express or top up with formula, just feed. And be so so proud of yourself!!

You can pop her off with your little finger, if she rootles again after a full feed give her your (clean!) little finger to suck on. This stops her needing a dummy because you always need your finger back! 2 hours sounds like too long...you risk getting very sore, I would have been very sore but it's individual. A lot of mum's feed baby to sleep - I chose not to so my children didn't rely on it, though I know how much easier it is! I'm not saying I never did it, especially for a night feed, I just tried not to. It makes it easier for someone else to put them down in the future so you can have a break.

If you do use a finger to break the latch- although I wouldn't want to do that at this age-make sure it's a wet finger. It's less likely to hurt if you do that.

And not all babies need to be burped-what happens if you don't?