Sleepy new baby

[Babieseverywhere]

Seen my sister and her new baby.

Sadly my sister had a similar traumatic birth to my first, differing slightly in details but not a nice home birth at all.

I had a chat to her on my own when we tried to get DN nursing and I am so proud of how she is copeing.

Baby has several cuts on her head and is highly bruised on her head, shoulders and back and is very sleepy.

Baby has briefly latched on three times since 2.30am (this was at 2pm in the afternoon)

I encouraged her to undress her baby and hold her skin to skin, baby latched briefly but only sucked gently and fell back asleep.

The midwifes had already suggested expressing, my sister was unsure but thought she would have a go. So as I left a midwife came to help her hand express.

We had a chat about keeping baby skin to skin as much as possible and watching for early feeding cues and how to break and reattach if she feels the latch isn't right. My sister has flat nipples like I do, with make latching a bit more tricky for a newborn.

I am going to take in some of the breastfeeding support help lines tomorrow and I am carrying my mobile around 24/7.

Is there anything else I should be suggesting ?

Newborns often need sleep more than milk the first day or so. The only problem is when they wake up starving and there's no one to help with BFing. Just keep her trying to see the BF counsellor in the daytimes.

Thanks Lovebucket for the reassurance.

I suppose not being medical I am worrying as I have no idea when the sleepy not nursing behaviour becomes a dehyration issue.

I'm sorry that your sister and you had traumatic births - that's horrible. I think your advice to your sister is excellent and I'm glad that she's getting some professional support. My ds took a while to get going with feeding - he was very sleepy and I had to wake him up to feed for the first few weeks. Fortunately, he wasn't my first baby, so I wasn't too stressed about it. Newborns do lose weight to start with, as they have colostrum not milk for a couple of days. The monitors for dehydration are the tone of baby's skin ie not too wrinkly and checking that the fontenelle (soft spot) is not being indented.
Hope that it all gets better.

NCT
She might find the local NCT BF counsellor helpful, via their BF helpline, you don't need to be a member. They also have a number to call to talk about traumatic births with other mums who have been there (when she's ready of course).
Plus all the other fun stuff like making new friends at local teagroups, nearly new sales etc.

This would be useful for her DP too. Like childbirth, starting BFing can be painful and difficult and DP's can often misguidedly sabotage things because they can't stand to see us suffering.

Good luck to her.

Thanks Lovebucket.

I have the NCT details on the list I am sending to her tomorrow. You are right they are a great organisation and have some wonderful resources.