Can't get DS to breastfeed

[Boogsie]

I'm really hoping to get some advice and/or support. DS is 10 days old, born via emergency C. I couldn't get him to latch to breastfeed in hospital and after 48 hours of him not feeding and screaming the ward down gave him a bottle. Ever since I have been trying to get him to breastfeed but he just won't latch. I think I have had him latch 6 times in 10 days so he can do it, but most of the time he just pulls away and screams until he gets the bottle. I've tried nipple guards which he sucks on for seconds then comes off. He gets offered the nipple at every feed. I e tried every position I can think of.....right now I'm expressing 8 times a day to keep my milk up in the hope he will switch but I'm getting very low. Please tell me if anyone has had this, any tips or even just advice on whether I should just give up and resign to the bottle?

No advice but I had to stop breastfeeding too (c section, DS is 11 days old today)

He has a lazy latch and left me in agony- raw nipples and I was yelling in pain every time I tried to feed him. Felt absolutely awful as dreaded every time he was hungry. Six days after birth I ended up back in hospital needing antibiotics due to an infection- had an awful fever- probably mastitis. At that point I was grateful he did take a bottle as I had to leave him at home with DH.

I’m expressing daily via an electric pump. I was given a Tommy Tippee one but you could try this- pharmacy hires them out- great electric ones- could be with you same day

www.medela-rental.co.uk/shop/symphony-double-breastpump-hire?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqa3pocqa8wIVGeDtCh1shAZYEAAYASAAEgLU1vD_BwE

I have made peace expressing and bottle feeding now. Breastfeeding just didn’t work for either of us- but he’s still getting breast milk and I’m happy about that. It’s not quite the easy ‘any woman can do it if they want to enough’ ideal sold to me by bloody NCT. The National breastfeeding helpline just advises to ‘keep trying’ but couldn’t answer me when I asked her how one night keep trying in absolute agony with blood running out of their nipples and feverish from the resulting infection.

Also like you OP I tried every position, did it exactly how I was shown in hospital- he can latch for around 3 seconds if I’m lucky then just chomps at the nipple.

No advice other than same situation here and we just switched to formula.
Breastfeeding wasn't working.
Expressing stressed me out.

I would do exactly the same again.

A happy and relaxed mum is necessary for a happy baby.

Those first weeks are HARD without adding anything else into the mix

Has he been checked for tongue tie? My eldest really struggled to latch and at 5 days old was diagnosed with TT. Once it was fixed, he was like a new baby in terms of feeding.

Can you do a few seconds of hand expression so there’s milk on your nipples, and try to lure him in with the smell? I would strip down to your pants and have baby in just his nappy and spend lots and lots of time like this just doing skin to skin and getting him to try and latch. Go to bed for the day if you can and focus all your energy on this - it’s a full time job at the beginning.

However, if you don’t want to do it for whatever reason - and you don’t even need a reason! - then it’s absolutely fine to stop! Millions of babies aren’t breastfed and thrive. If it’s causing you that much stress, it’s not worth it!

Had the same, emergency c section and he screamed the ward down for 2 days. Gave him a bottle and he was relaxed and slept so well, he was like a different baby. I felt so bad I waited 2 days to give him a bottle.

Tried nipple shield, every position even a lactation consultant and she couldn't get him to latch.

I expressed and used formula together for a month, using the yellow pump can't remember the name and eventually switched to bottle.

He is a happy healthy 8 year old now, and DH had a great bond with him doing the 11pm feed every night when I went to bed. It worked out perfectly and DH loved that time just them together.

Thanks everyone for your support. We have tried the milk on the nipple, expressing into his mouth, feeding hungry, feeding after bottle, feeding halfway through, done the skin on skin... He's had the midwives do the usual checks and no-one has said he has TT. We're seeing a lactation consultant on Monday who will be better able to diagnose but I assumed because he has latched before that he isn't TT?
The guilt of not breastfeeding him is quite intense as well as the endless schedule of trying to breastfeed, bottle-feeding and expressing. I'm desperate to make it work but can't find the way

Ask about tongue tie on Monday if only to rule it out. It wasn't picked up by midwives when I had Ds and I gave up bf within a week.

Hey. I had exactly the same problem with my son and ended up mix feeding him. The guilt of giving him formula crushed me but he is 1 now and very happy and healthy. My advice would be to take care of yourself, keep going with breastfeeding for as long as you want and it's okay if you want to stop. A good breast pump will help with supply. My issue was low supply which never rectified no matter how much pumping I did. One thing that did help was feeding at night when he was too sleepy to fight me. Hopefully the lactation consultant can help. But always remember to look after your mental health, not being able to breastfeed really devastated me and looking back I wish I just relaxed about the whole thing.

Good luck

I just want to say that although I know it is immensely hard not to feel guilty, please don't.

Bottle and formula is absolutely fine and a perfect alternative.

Either way baby will thrive because he has a loving mum

I gave up, so can’t help with bf tips! One thing I can say though, if you choose to FF don’t feel guilty. I felt so ashamed of giving up with my DTs, I was almost apologetic whenever anyone asked how they were fed and beat myself up at another mothering failure for months. With the benefit of hindsight, nobody really cares, and it really doesn’t matter as long as baby is fed. At the end of the day, a happy mum = a happy baby. Good luck whichever you decide to do 💐

I have found the more I express the more I’ve been able to get out, but I’m not doing anymore than 5 bottles a day- we top up with formula. I have no idea how people build up surplus in the fridge/freezer at all. It’s time consuming so when DH goes back to work I’m not sure I’ll manage to sit and express like I am now…

You need some professional support- bfing is a learned skill and often takes a bit of time so don't feel too disheartened. It's not too late. Are you in England? Ask your midwife to refer you to your local infant feeding team. Mine were so helpful and I needed someone to watch me feed and give positioning advice.

My DD couldn't latch at all at birth. She did eventually, at around six weeks. The lactation consultant said she just needed to grow a bit, which proved accurate. I pumped till then and then did mix pump and breast till about 12 weeks and then breastfed till she was a year.

The fact he is able to latch is good - they grow so rapidly in the first few weeks that you might find he naturally just figures it out quite soon.

What teat are you using? Is it a very slow flow one? We cup fed DD for the first couple of weeks and then switched to the slowest flow we could find so she still had to work for it and didn't get frustrated by breast being slower to give milk at first,

Using the size 0 teats so it's as slow as we can get and he still wolf's it down!

We switched at around 12 days because my baby was starving - he looked like golum and had to be tube fed for two days. It was awful, I wish I'd just switched to a bottle rather than persevering.

He apparently had a good latch but my nipples were raw and I dreaded feeding him. It hurt so much even though I was on decent painkillers for the c section.

I’m glad you are seeing a lactation consultant, that is your best bet of getting an accurate answer on tongue tie. And they should be able to check for any other possible issues too. Just hang in there till Monday.

There’s a great article in the LLL (la Leche League) magazine this month about a baby who didn’t latch for four months after birth but eventually did and is still breastfeeding past a year. Might be worth seeing if your local group can lend you it if it would be useful.

From what I recall the advice was basically chill, skin to skin as much as possible, don’t offer breast as food, keep expressing.

Good luck

You are doing everything right. Lactation consultant a great idea. Meanwhile get hold of the best pump you can get your hands on and give him as much BM via a bottle as you possibly can. That will do just fine for now.

I'm sorry you're finding it so hard. Breastfeeding was the single hardest thing about having a newborn. My experience was very similar to yours.

It turned out my boy had a moderate tongue tie. I wouldn't trust midwives to assess this tbh, as to my knowledge they don't get much formal training to assess properly. 4 midwives and the health visitor all looked in my son's mouth and assured me he wasn't tongue tied.

We got a lactation consultant in, and she was the first person to put her finger in his mouth to physically assess! We then got it snipped privately so minimal waiting time.

He was also a breech baby, and the lactation consultant thought he might have some discomfort in his head and jaw where he had been pushed up into my ribs, and suggested cranial osteopathy. I'm not 100% convinced this did anything, but his feeding did improve gradually - although I suspect this was more to do with him growing and tongue tie snip.

I used nipple shields up to 12 weeks - it is definitely worth trying a different brand or size as they do vary. I liked the MAM ones.

In the end I mixed fed for 10 months! It is absolutely not a failure to use formula if that is what you decide to do. Your mental health is just as important as baby's health here.

I really hope you get some answers from your lactation consultant and things improve.

That’s interesting- my DS was a breech baby too. One midwife looked in his mouth for two seconds and declared no tongue tie. Another refused to even look as apparently it’s so rare

Can you search for any drop in breast feeding clinics? These were a life saver for me. Where in the country are you? It’s so tough at the beginning, and there’s no substitute for someone really supporting you on a 1:1 basis.

I'm not sure I was right in persisting but I got my dd to finally feed well at 10 weeks old. I tried shields, spoke to 7 lactation nurses, relaxing abput it, stressing abput it, offering the boob just twice a day or before every feed, and any advice I could find on the internet.

In the end I spoke to our equivalent of the HV and the GP and asked if I could let her be hungry for a bit. We ended up deciding that for one week I would feed her bottles at night, a bottle at noon and at 6 pm and the rest was boob or stay hungry. She fed by the end of the first morning and three days later fed well at night and during the day except for the evening. She still gets a bottle in the evening.

Please don't do this without proper medical advice. My dd was slightly overweight so we felt we could risk her being hungry for a few hours. Your situation could be different.

Skin to skin.
Make a nest and keep both of you nude for as plough of the day as poss.

Take a look at biological breastfeeding and the biological position. There's lots on YouTube.

If you put baby tummy to tummy on you, with very little help he will find your nipple and latch on.

I couldn't believe it when my DD did it (I had an amazing lactation consultant) xx

I'm in the Glasgow area. I've been able to find an online zoom session and got some.useful tips on positioning but still getting limited success. It can't be the position needs to be to within such a small degrees of accuracy to get a latch? Or is it really that precise in the beginning?