tips to get baby to open mouth wider??

[Chequers]

please!!! (b/feeding)

Have you tried stroking their bottom lip? I found this made my DS open wider.

will try, thanks

patience (i always tried to shove DS on way too early)
i thought it was stroking upper lip?
making sure the angle you position baby is good.
expressing a little bit of milk off, so you have a little bit on your nipple (LO can then smell it)
i phoned up one of the breastfeeding lines and too much to write here, but there is a way of holding / slightly pushing between baby shoulder blades (with palm of your hand), which helped my LO's mouth open. sounds strange, but it seemed to work. probably worth getting more expert advice. good luck.

i had this problem and was shown how to sort of "roll" her mouth on, so bottom lip came into contact with the breast 1st and kind of stuck there....iyswim....sorry VERY hard to explain! But a bf counsellor showed me, i would agree re getting rl advice

Mmmmm, I sort of pulled her lower lip down a bit. She did eventually start to do it herself.

this is the bane of my existence. my six-week old will not open wide. or he will, and then slip back as soon as he is on. he ends up taking just a little more than the nipple, and hence feeds constantly due to his lack of efficiency.
i consulted multiple midwives and a breastfeeding consultant but got no real solution.
sometimes it helps when i nudge down his chin, just below his lip.
i was also advised to try to drop the nipple into his mouth sideways, if you can envision that.
i once had luck with that push between the shoulder blades - you can check out videos on it at the Dr. Jack Newman web site (google it).
basically i've given up improving the latch, as long as he is gaining weight. (now he is, but it did take him three weeks to get back to his birth weight.)

good luck!!

Has your baby been checked for tongue-tie? My daughter's tongue-tie meant that she couldn't use her tongue very well or open her mouth wide enough so she was sucking on my nipple. We had it cut at 9 days and it made a huge difference.

we never worked out why dd couldn't/wouldn't open her mouth wide, 2 very experienced bf advisors and the lactation consultant at our mat unit took a look and couldn't give us an answer!

Was truly awful for a while esp as her weight gain was poor, but she sorted it out herself in the end

now at 9mths she can give me love bites the size of 10p bits on my boobs if she aims wrongly!!

I went to a breastfeeding clinic which was brilliant, so would definitely suggest that if you haven't already.

I ended up having to use my thumb to sort of shove more of my boob into his mouth so he wasn't just sucking (painfully) on the end of the nipple. I would have to take him on and off until we got it right, and watch like a hawk so that I could time it just right to when his mouth was open the widest. It took a while but we finally got the hang of it.

Good luck.

there's a DVD called Follow me Mum by (iirc)Rebecca Glover. She shows a position where you sort of 'fold' you nipple into the babies mouth. Worked wonders for me and DS2 as he had a little mouth and couldn't open really wide.

I would try and explain but really can't. I used to use ds2 when peer supporting to demo!