Just reading an article in Mother and Baby magazine about a woman who considers herself to be a 'breastfeeding failure'(her words).
Her newbown was juandiced and under UV and m/w's made her top him up, but she carried on breastfeeding.
She says that the baby would: "latch on easily and feed for up to an hour...but...he would cry hysterically for two or three hours at a time...by week three we suspected the problem was hunger...he would root frantically, searching for milk the second he came off my breast."
My DD was very much like this (also topped up at a young age as a 'solution' to severe weight loss. All the advice I got (mostly from wonderful mnetters) was just to feed, feed, feed. My DD did just that - feeding with short breaks often for 3/4 hour periods.
Anyway the reason this article seemed odd to me is because the (poor) mother then goes on to say: "I made an appt with a breastfeeding counsellor, Clare Byam-Cook. Her diagnoses was that the baby was latching on well but he wasn't sucking properly. The result was my breasts weren't receiving the 'message' to produce more, so my milk suply was lagging. Even then the baby seemed to be lacking the strength - or knack - to drain milk from my breast.
Were he an animal, Clare explained, he would be considered the 'runt' of the litter. In nature, a farmer would...hand-rear it. With a bottle. And that, she said gently, was what I'd need to do with my baby."
Does that sound like normal breastfeeding counsellor advice to you? I'm shocked by it, but don't know if that is what is normally suggested by bfc's in these situations.
(well done to anyone who get's through this post - realise it is long but wanted to quote it correctly!)