Two hour feeding sessions?

[BarrelOfMonkeys]

New to all this breastfeeding lark - midwife says that a 30-40 minute session would be a good feed, but also says to let baby come off th breast on her own. Left to her own devices though, sometimes its fine but sometimes she stays on for two hours, after which I end up detaching her - the sucking tails off to very intermittently and weaker, but she doesn't let go. Should I be detaching her at all? Should i detach her earlier? When I do detach she shows no interest in going back on.

(I should probably mention that I am using nipple shields as she won't latch - that's a whole other story though, she's less than a week old and we ended up syringe feeding her for days 3-5 so shields are at least an improvement on that.)

hi BoM. 2 hour feeds are certaoinly not unheard of, and definitely ok for a baby that's under a week old (congrats btw!)
remember,. the more she feeds the more she is stimulating your breasts to produce more milk, so it's absolutely fine to be feeding for that length of time.

are you trying anything to get rid of the nipple shields though? I only ask because I know that they can affect how much milk baby takes and that some babies can't milk the breast as efficiently through them as they can without... so perhaps that could explain her long feeding sessions?

We're using shields at the mo out of desperation - she wouldn't take the breast at all until we tried them yesterday, prior to that I was expressing every three hours and syringe feeding her every two. Nearly lost the plot but shields have at least freed up a little time for sleep. Do they tend to get quicker at feeding when they get older? Just to give me something to cling to if she does another 3.30-6.00am stint (including nappy change)...

oh yes, they do get a lot quicker. and it's normal for htem to cluster feed too, usually in the evening, but sometimes in the morning as well.
which basically means they just want/need boob for hours on end lol

sounds like you're doing great though have you seen a bfc at all?

I'll cling to that thought then!

I ended up in hospital for an extra night because of her feeding problems and we had various people look at her. Got her latching for about half a day and they let me go home, she continued to latch for the next five feeds and then gave up. Since then we've had a different midwife every day, suggesting all sorts which we've tried from feeding in the bath to sleeping skin to skin in bed and everything in between. There's a clinic on Monday I'm hoping to make it along to.

We usually have a cluster feed between 4pm and 8pm - just done a two hour shift with her and exhausted, next one will probably start in half an hour, but hopefully a more manageable 45 mins! Her new trick is also refusing to lie down after a feed... I'm guessing its wind but nothing seems to placate her as soon as she's on her back, feels like I am permanently attached to her!

I used nipple shields with my first baby as he was so impatient and hungry that he would get too angry to make the effort to latch on. With the shields he had something solid to get hold of so he would feed. We used them for six weeks at which point he worked out how to feed without them. He put on a pound a week for the first month. We kept trying without, every now and then to see if he would do it without and eventually he did. Keep at it and you should be able to ditch them in the end! I went on to feed him until he was 7 months at which point he found looking at other people was more interesting than bfing!

Thanks - I'm hanging in there by my fingernails at the moment so need to hear all the 'breastfeeding worked out in the end' stories I can! I was prepared for sore nipples but not how stressful it's all turning out to be!

it's hard isn'ti t? I had a terrible time with my first and gave up due to undiagnosed tongue tie.

with my second he also had tongue tie but it was spotted and dealt with, so although I had 3 weeks of stressful painful feeding we got it sorted and he is still bf now at 15 months.

it's mostly a matter of getting the right support. it's difficult when you get lots of different info and advice though, I had that prob with ds1. all the mw's told me different things.

have you had her PROPERLY checked for a tongue-tie? I ask because my DS was checked twice and I was told no tongue-tie - it was the lactation specialist who found it (I was asking for it to be checked because DH has a tongue-tie and it can run in families). I had it snipped at about 2 weeks and it made a big difference in terms of time of feed (>2hours down to less than 1hour), ease of latch and pain of feeding.

If she hasn't been checked by someone (who knows what they're doing) running their finger under her tongue, get that done - it could make all the difference.

good luck barrel and well done for hanging on in there... its not easy and it does seem like all you do is feed them at the beginning.. it will definitely get better as you both get more practise at it!

with the winding thing, I found sometimes if I lifted her up, laid her flat, and then lifted again, that would bring it out. Also the one where you sit them on your lap, support the head and straighten their back (think of their tummies in the middle as a straw - if you get the kink out, the wind should come straight up - or down). DD wouldn't latch if she had wind...

I'm due this week - come and join us on the Jan 09 postnatal thread so we can go through the pain together... thats if my baby decides to join us in January!

I'll ask again about tongue tie - she was latching previously though, which is the really frustrating thing... however I totally agree that if you ask three midwives a question you get three different answers, so you never know...

Thank Fourlittlefeet - I'll try and find that thread later - she's just fed again so if I can get her to sleep I'm off for some o my own!

its here - still fledgeling as we've had so few births yet... all the babies seem to be niggling away and hiding from the cold!