Tiktok or someone who knows - did I advise my friend correctly?

[MaHobbit]

My friend is trying to establish BF with no2 (no1 was FF from 4 weeks). Baby born on Monday by ELCS and generally well, but a little jaundiced. Came home yesterday.

Babs seems to feed a lot in night and not at all interested in day (ie not for a good 8 hours+). She will take EBM from a syringe during that time if encouraged.

I'm not trained or owt, but BF my little git angel for 13 months so she asked (as a mate) what I'd do. She was inclined to leave it for babs to want to feed but MW had said don't leave it too long.

Basically I said check with MW about appropraite intervals between feeds to make sure babs doesn't get so tired/hungry she can't feed.

Also said lots of time skin to skin as relaxed as possible in a nice environment. Express a drop of milk onto nipple so she smells of milk to see if babs gets interested. Try and stay chilled. Offer breast as often as babs wants and nice skin to skin between times if she's not feeding well, even if she has syringe fed anyway.

Told her to google (or get hubby to google) NCT or LaLeche for advice lines if midwife not helpful or confident.

Was I talking cr*p??? Should I have said anything else/different?

Not sure what she does when not feeding for hours as not seen mate try to feed - ie babs might be sleepy or fretful if offered breast just not sure which. We'd love it if I could spend time there but I am a human snot factory so can't visit.

I'm only as experienced as you are OP but it sounds to me like your advice was spot on.

Bumping for you in the hopes someone better qualified sees this.

if the baby is jaundiced then you often do need to encourage them to feed more often than they ask for it - jaundice makes them very tired and feeding regularly helps 'flush' the build up of bile from the system.

midwife is right, she shouldn#'t be leaving a baby that small for 8 hours without feeding, esp with jaundice.
she needs to be encouraging baby (in all the ways you suggexted) to feed more frequently, and she might want to consider expressing if baby won't feed and then giving that via syringe/cup/spoon
baths together may help?

DS2 was a small, jaundiced, inefficient feeder and I was told by RL people and tiktok and many others on here to not let him go longer than 2 hours in the day and 3 hours at night. I used to wake him up to feed him. He was very sleepy from too few calories.

I am still bf him at 10 weeks and don't intend to stop but, by God its been hard work.

I wish her good luck.

I had a small prem jaundiced section baby and I had to wake her throughout the night to feed her. Every 2-3 hours basically. I erred on the side of caution because she was little.

Once I forgot to set the alarm and she slept for 9 hours. I freaked!

12 months on and I still breastfeed her every 3-4 hours. It's only been in the past few months that she's gone for long stretches at night.

Good luck to her and the frequency should ease a bit after the jaundice goes and supply is established.

Thanks all. Glad I wasn't talking out of the wrong orifice.

I am sooo proud of my mate. She's still trying. It must be such hard work. I can't imagine it as I never had any of that with sprout.

Learned something new though. Didn't know about jaundice affecting feeding.