If you had a sleepy baby that fell asleep at the breast

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How long did it take to improve and what helped?

Ds is not gaining weight and constantly falls asleep as soon as he has my nipple in his mouth.
At the MW's suggestion, I am switch feeding and expressing to top up, using breast compression and doing all that I can to keep him awake.
Can anyone give me an idea of when he will start feeding better on his own?

Sorry if I have ended up with multiple threads. The infant feeding topic won't post properly.

Tickle his feet, try to keep him cool and not to warm as warm and cosy he will fall asleep. Tickle under his chin, tickle his cheek.
Change his nappy as that always wakes them up.

How old is he?

How old are they? My first was like that, lost 12% bodyweight. We had to tickle her feet to wake her to feed her more on a 2 hour schedule (expressed bm). Took about 3 weeks for her to gain enough energy to feed properly and gain. She latched eventually but we kept on mixed feeding as it worked really well for us

How old are they? My first was like that, lost 12% bodyweight. We had to tickle her feet to wake her to feed her more on a 2 hour schedule (expressed bm). Took about 3 weeks for her to gain enough energy to feed properly and gain. She latched eventually but we kept on mixed feeding as it worked really well for us

He is 2 weeks. We are doing all the foot tickling etc and stip him off when he starts to nod.
Thanks @NationalShiteYear it's nice to have a timeframe. Sounds very similar to ds with similar weight loss.

My DD was so sleepy when she was tiny! In answer to your question, she slept A LOT for the first six weeks. I was worried she wasn't awake long enough to learn anything, but she hit all her early milestones at the right times (she's 11 months now).

She lost about 10% of her weight and nearly had to go back into hospital for jaundice, but picked up quickly once we started giving her top ups of formula from about 2 weeks. We had a few MWs giving us different advice. One said to give her 3 ml of formula after each feed, which made no difference. The other told us to give her 10 ml per kg of bodyweight after each feed, so about an ounce at first. We kept that up until her 8 week check.

To keep her awake for feeds, we had to keep annoying her by wiping her face with a cold water wipe. Feet ticking didn't do much! My family were a bit shocked to see the palaver on Christmas day!

Congratulations on your new baby! I worried far too much when mine was little, so just wanted to say don't worry!

Another sleepy baby here! Also lost 12% but from memory (she's 11 now) after 3.5 weeks she was gaining. We found the following helped with DD:
Feet tickling
Strip her off
Tickle cheeks
Jiggle
Try to catch her with wake up tricks before she REALLY passes out. Otherwise once she was out that was it
Try not to stress, accept it if she has 2 sucks and then sleeps 3 hours. She won't starve herself. Pump the excess milk if you can to keep up production although I rarely got much out of a boob from pumping after she had started a feed.

It's such a pain but it passes. As she grew it turned out she was an excellent all round sleeper. Multiple daytime naps on a regular schedule and 12 hours sleeping at night. So get through this and hopefully you'll have an Angel baby on your hands (then you can get some sleep too...)

Good luck and congratulations

Sorry not a mum and no advice but this thread is the only thing getting me sleepy tonight

My first was like this and midwives advice was to change her just before feeding and strip her off to just a nappy to feed, so it's not too warm and snuggly. Sometimes the trick can be just getting them fed well enough that they have energy to feed and are not so sleepy. How old is he? I know for the first couple weeks, my first one had this issue. She wasn't eating enough, so didn't have enough energy and so wasn't able to feed enough. Realistically, sleeping on the breast is fine, as long as there is plenty of feeding again later. So feed for a bit, sleep, as soon as he wakes up, feed more, etc. I pretty much fed mine every time they moved constantly around the clock for the first 4-6 weeks and it did get easier. It sounds like you are doing the right things.

Switch feeding, skin to skin, expressing after feeds and 3 hourly expression sessions all helped to maintain my supply. I eventually got him diagnosed with a tongue tie and after it got fixed so did his sleepiness.

I had a sleepy baby too, he lost 10% of his birth weight.

I agree with the above - I’d start feeding and each time he looked like he was going to drop off would remove one bit of his clothing to wake him up again all the way down to his nappy, then tickle/use wet wipes to annoy him into staying awake, then change nappy and redress item by item until he’d had enough!

It was very tiring and stressful, but it passed within 3 weeks. Hang in there! I’ve just been trying to get my 14 weeker to sleep by feeding him for the past 40 minutes and no joy yet. He’s having a lovely time And is finding it all quite funny 🤪

Great midwife at hospital taught us to wake DD up doing bicycle legs. This worked better than tickling feet. Also lots of expressing for top ups by syringe.

Both my babies were sleepy too - cold wet wipes, stripping to nappy and stroking their hands while feeding worked the best for us. I think we turned the corner around 2-3 weeks. It was so exhausting at the time and I remember being envious of friends’ babies who would wake and cry to feed! On the positive side they both continued to be amazing sleepers so hopefully your little one will be the same!

Has jaundice been ruled out?

DS was like this and we switched to mixed feeding in the end, he lost so much weight it was a real worry and nothing I did would keep him awake. He was always an epic sleeper though. DD was no problem, although she did have a mix of bf and formula from the start.

I had to wipe DC2 with a cold baby wipe!