Breastfeeding and Express Breastfeeding.

[LynneK]

Hey girls,

I posted through the night about my struggle to get our little big to stay on the boob.

Our midwife visited today for our first home visit and weighed him and he has lost 1lbs . That's 11% of his body weight. I'm petrified that we will be readmitted to the hospital.

I used the medela for the first time today and managed to express off about 4oz about 12.15pm, 4oz about 5pm and 6oz about 8pm (both boobs each time). I'm syringe feeding it to our little man and he is taking it all.

My concerns are these
1. He's not feeding from the boob because although he latches on fine and sucks for a while (approx 2-3mins) he falls asleep after that and stops feeding.
2. He will get lazy because I'm syringe feeding rather than breastfeeding and will never learn/never want to.
3. The midwife wasn't v happy about me expressing with then medela swing pump. She says hand express or feed and I'm upset because it's a struggle .

Any thoughts/advice? X

 

[willow76]

What I found useful was the le leche league book. It had all kinds of trouble shooting tips, put my mind at ease. They also have a helpline.

 

[LynneK]

Ok thank you I'll have a look xx

 

[MrsS143]

Would you happily express all your feeds?

 

[Lilmisshopeful]

I had the same issues with my baby. He spent the first 2 days in the nicu bring tube fed my milk. When he came to me on the ward he would latch but not for long where he was used to it being poured in so had to have formula top ups in a cup do he didn't get nipple confusion. As my milk came in better he fed longer. Keep trying the boob hun he will get it. Has he been checked for a tongue tie sometimes that can affect feeding xxx

 

[sorpresa_bea]

Your case sounds very similar to mine buT we had to resort to formula. We also did the express/syringe for a week, eventually baby gained enough strength to suck more off the breast and we weaned the bottles altogether (both expressed and formula bottles). The whole process took about 3 weeks but we managed to go to exclusive breastfeeding with a lot of persistence and hard work.

I also have the medela swing. My midwife and lactation consultants never told me to hand express in this situation as what was important was to increase the milk supply and hence a pump will allow you to empty your breasts much faster.


Keep offering the boob, always first before syringe or bottle. I preferred the bottle with the medela calma teat as this slowed down the flow much more than the syringe. And as others have said, wake your LO when he falls sleep at the breast. My lactation consultant got me on s crisis management plan of: 10 minutes on the breasts first, followed by expressed bottle (as much as I had managed to express which was a lot less than you), followed by formula if need be as a final resort top up.

Gradually I increased the time on the breasts to 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 40 so that less bottle was needed.

Hang in there. It does get easier.

 

[tinselcat]

I was also using an electronic medela pump for expressing, I don't see why a hand pump would be better.

My newborn was initially unwilling to suckle for more than 2 or 3 sucks before giving up, but that changed.

I also used to finger feed him the expressed milk (through a small tube which he had to suck on but wouldn't confuse him like a bottle teat), I wonder if you are squirting the milk into the baby's mouth (I guess this is what a syringe does) then he may not learn to suck himself?

I was also given the same advise as sorpresa, to offer breast before other means of feeding, although I didn't always follow it at first. I was similar in that I got to exclusive breastfeeding by 3.5 weeks old (my baby lost over 12% of his bodyweight in first few days).

If you need to wake up the baby, the advice I was given was to change his nappy - seems to work for me!

Good luck hun xx