Baby 'forgets' how to breastfeed mainly at night

[Heyha]

I have been lucky with my DD so far in terms of feeding, she took to it straight away, no sign of tongue tie, reflux or any of the other bigger problems that people have to get through. I do however have an emerging issue and it's starting to worry me.
During the day she will wake, give feeding cues, and latch almost straight away without any fuss. At night, she can be in the same position, nipple in mouth, and just be seemingly in capable of latching properly and actually feeding. She the gets pissed off, which makes it even harder. At the minute we can get there eventually but it's taking longer each night feed.
I'm worried about this, worried about it spreading into the daytime and/or when we go out. How do you help a baby that is capable of feeding in a textbook way but isn't able to do it all the time? I've got to the point where we get up at night and I feed her in the exact same place, position etc that works so well during the day but I can't become fixed to that one place, and it still doesn't help much at night anyway.
If I can't feed her she won't gain weight and she was only a little baby anyway although by day 12 had put back on all she'd lost from her birth weight AND 5 ounces more so she is obviously capable of doing well on breast milk.

Anybody been through this and got back on track?

That post has too many capables in it! I should add that DD is 2.5 weeks old

Hi Heyha, it could be that she is still tired when she wakes up so is not really focusing on her latch. Things will get easier as she gets a little bigger. Have you tried any different positions through the night? When my little one was very little I did also used to have to sit up with him, which can be very tiring.

Perhaps do a nappy change first to see if that wakes her more? I would occasionally wash DC3’s face (just with wet cotton wool) to make him awake enough for a feed and turn the light on whilst he got latched, once he was on I’d go back to just the night light.

I know it’s hard but this likely to be a passing phase and things will be very different in a couple of weeks. My DS is 9 weeks now and night feeds are now much easier and less frequent!

DC2 was a bit like this - wouldn't latch properly at night and then got frustrated. I ended up expressing and then giving her the bottle. It sounds ridiculous but it actually took less time and was less annoying than trying to get her to breastfeed direct.

It went on until she was about 4 months and she became much more capable at night and we swapped back to breastfeeding.

Thanks all 🙂 lots of things to try but I might well collect my let-down tomorrow (I can get a fair old bit without trying) then have it ready to give at night for one feed then try the 'wake-up' ideas for the next. She's been doing it sometimes during the day today as well so I'm tearing my hair out a bit. I think it might even be that milk is flowing TOO much on the side she's struggling more with?

It could be flow it might just be a bit fast for her. It’s also not that unusual for a baby to prefer one breast over another and she might just be waiting for you to offer her favourite!!

^just a point about collecting the let down - generally it’s not a complete feed but mainly foremilk. Foremilk contains more lactose so can be harder to digest. DS was struggling with forceful let down so I was collecting and giving it to him in a bottle - he had green bubbly nappies - after a lot of hassle incl 10 weeks dairy free I discovered it was the drip milk feeds and now use an electric pump to get a fore and hind milk feed

I think we might be onto something here @maidenover and @Blondiecub0109 as I've just collected 90ml from the tricky side during 15 min feed from her preferred side...then offered her the dodgy boob and she's gone straight on!
I didn't know that about letdown but it makes sense, I think I'll collect it anyway in case DP needs to give her a feed but won't be hanging onto it for the freezer. If her nappies go manky I'll just collect and dump it so at least we're still alleviating the latch issue, I'll keep a close eye on them.

It's so nice to be able to chat through a problem, thank you ladies 🙂

Don’t worry OP. This is not unusual. The milk you produce at night is larger in volume and has a different consistency/taste (express and have a look sometime!). It could be that your letdown is not the same at night so she isn’t quite sure what to do. If she’s breastfeeding during the day, she’ll only get better and better at doing so, each time she does it she is practising the skills she needs to cope with differences in your supply. I used to tickle DDs toes to wake her up a bit as sometimes she would be too hungry to sleep, but too sleepy to maintain her latch! That doesn’t usually last beyond the first couple of weeks.

FWIW, I was so frustrated by bfing DD at the stage. I was determined to continue, but seriously doubted whether we were going to be able to keep it up. We did, and she did absolutely fine on it. She was a little one when she was born (6 lb) and did just great exclusively bf for the first 6 months, and we kept up feeds well beyond that as we were both happy to continue.