Please can someone help me. Since Chaise was born I've been trying to breastfeed but he just wont latch on! After 2 days I agreed to him having a bottle as he just wasn't getting any milk.

I'm still trying, and I'm expressing but I don't make enough for a full feed. When I take him in the bath I can sometimes get him to latch on when I use nipple shields but otherwise he won't.
He gets really stressed out and impatient and then I give in and give him a bottle.
The last midwife to advise me on it said my technique was good and that he just won't do it... but maybe someone knows how I could encourage him to?

I'd love to be able to breastfeed, and I'm worried that if it doesnt happen soon I'll lose my milk as I just dont have time to express all the time and bottle-feed him.

Thanks

Hi again - I haven't heard anything yet from my champion - may she's too busy?

Hiya hun, not sure how much i'm able to help, but I would like to pipe up and give some advice. First, try to stop giving him a bottle. Switch to cup feeding (use a small plastic cup or even a medicine cup works). That way he won't get nipple confusion. We had to do this with Savannah for a couple of days because she wouldn't latch on. Babies are very capable of feeding from a cup but it is messy.

Secondly, try to get in contact with a local Lactation consultant. Possibly do a search on Lactation Consultants + your area or find the national association for them. My mum is a LC and she couldn't get Savannah to latch, it ended up that we hired a lady to help. The only difference with her and mym mum was that this lady was alot more forceful in getting Savannah on. She would literally shove her onto the boob. I also found bathing with LO was excellent to work on the latch. Could you not use a nipple shield more often until he gets the hang of bfing?

Hi there! I had problems with my no.1 with latching on, for ages. This time round I was watching some other mums in hospital and copied them and it worked really well - basically I was doing the poking the nipple onto the bottom lip thing, until his mouth opened, but what I wasn't doing was kind of rolling his entire body towards the nipple. Now he latches on great, but I know that the angle of his body has to be tilted right in towards me, and his head has to be exactly right in the crook of my arm, or he won't. Don't know if all babies are this fussy, but thought I'd share! Good luck hun. xxx

As difficult as it is, nursing on demand is the best way to go. LOs have their own schedule as to when they are hungry, and it can be difficult to get them on a schedule to start with.

Thanks Samantha675. I would rather have some kind of timetable and be flexible around that though - extra feeds for when he's extra hungry is fine with me. What I want to avoid is having no structure at all or having him just suckle for comfort. Sorry, I see by your tickers that you don't really believe in that!

I'd really appreciate any tips from mums who have managed to get their babies into some kind of routine

Routine is great but don't expect your bub to follow it at a week old.

magicvw - at first its best to feed on demand so you learn when they need feeding. breastmilk doesnt fill them up uas much as formula, therefore its hard to say they should be going 3 hours between feeds or whatever. even if its just for a week or so i'd say let LO feed when they want just so you get a rough idea of when they need feeding. in the old days mind, they used to say every 3 hours, 10 mins on each side was enough. tbh i'm not sure anyone on here breastfeeds in a set routine, i think its more on demand. obv as the babies get older its easier to say they'll feed at this time, this time and this time, but newborns its a lot harder!! hope someone can help with the routine tho xx

Thanks girls! He was born in an old-fashioned hospital where they go on 3-hourly feeds from day 1 and you're not allowed to do otherwise (gave birth in Bulgaria). We weren't even allowed to see the baby except at feeding time. So I know he had that routine for at first 3 days anyway, so it seems like a step backwards iykwim...

I've PM'd you hun. If you want to do it that way then of course, it's totally your choice. I appreciate that some people like the 'old fashioned' (your words not mine ) way of baby rearing but it doesnt really work well, as far as BFing goes. It's generally accepted that demand feeding, especially a just a week old, works well with BFing. My MIL was from the old school of 10 mins on either side then leave them for 3/4 hours. When she saw how I was BFing on demand, it took her some time to get her head around it. She actually says now she wishes she'd not had her children under that regime - like you have described where you are 'told' how to raise your baby. She said to me 'it's no wonder my babies cried so much if I'd left them for hours when they were hungry'. She thinks (and I agree) that one of the reasons that my LO is such a happy, easy baby is because I let her settle into her own routine naturally. For me that started to roughly fall into place about 3 weeks in and got more and more predictable over the coming weeks and I've been able to set my watch my her for months