Does it matter if baby can’t latch properly?

[Dulcie6]

My 1 month old can’t latch properly.

she did occasionally latch properly a couple of weeks ago, but not v often.

She now just wants to suck the nipple. I put her in the correct position and she refuses to suck and re positions herself to only suck on the nipple. My nipples were cracked and bleeding a couple of weeks ago but are now fixed and it doesn’t hurt to breastfeed.

She has put on loads of weight and is already 3-6 months in some clothing. Health Visitor weighed her and she had put on double the weight they were expecting, so she’s definitely getting enough milk.

Is it a massive deal if she continues to refuse to latch properly? Will this cause issues in the future?

I'd have said yes but if she seems content and is gaining weight she's obviously fine.

Maybe you've got unusual piping, as it were, and she's realised she doesn't need to work hard. Clever girl.

I would have said yes if you where still sore and bleeding. But your not and your baby is gaining weight well so ovously getting enough. Neither of mine had a very deep latch mainly as I have large nipples it didn't cause us any problems.

Yes and no.

My daughter has a terrible latch and we saw the infant feeding team who were adamant I should get the right latch before "letting" her feed. The issue we had was she was coming off and screaming every few seconds so even if I got a good latch the first time 3 seconds later when she relatched it was bad again. It didn't hurt and she was gaining weight. My HV said if it wasn't hurting and she was getting plenty of milk and doing ok keep going whilst we figure out the cause of the screaming. She was eventually diagnosed with severe silent reflux and multiple food allergies. After this she latched much better this was around 5 months

I don't have a clue what the latch with my baby was like. I did zero research, shoved her on my boob and it did the job. I think sometimes we can overthink these things. Whether your latch is textbook perfect or not, it's doing the job, and that's all that's necessary.

We don't see chimpanzee's reading articles on latches, phoning up breastfeeding consultants, going to breastfeeding support groups, and most of the time they get it to work and it's fine. Sometimes we just need to go with the (literal) flow.

Yes and no.

Right now it's not hurting and she's gaining weight so it's all good.

However what can happen is your supply is quite good now, but in a couple of months when your baby is bigger and needs to take more, your supply won't have been stimulated as well because she's not working those deeper milk ducts. It's a lot harder to get a 3mo baby to relearn how to latch.

Highly recommend finding a specialist breastfeeding support group in your area and visiting them. There may be a way you can tweak how you're holding her that will just make it easier for her to latch more deeply.