Breast feeding help please!!

[noella]

Well another week has passed and not much luck. Every time I try to put her on she makes like a gagging face and will not latch. Is this because there is very very little milk?? What can I do to encourage her? I know the more I can get her to suck the better chance of establishing a supply again but she seems to prefer a bottle?

 

[LLL_Sarah]

Dear Noella,

This is not a problem that can be solved through e-mail. It really needs a face to face consultation. The person helping you needs to see exactly what is happening when you are putting your baby to the breast and work out a programme you can follow to get back to full breastfeeding.

If you are not happy to contact me or one of the other LLL leaders I recommend that you contact a lactation consultant. The lactation consultants I know who are working in the community are:
Mrs Chee from Everdawn Midwives - 2705 9322
May Hui - 9070 2668
Dr. Sophie Leung ? 3194 6803
There are also lactation consultant working in the Well Baby Clinic at the Matilda Hospital (Tuesday and Thursday) 2849 1500

Best wishes,
SARAH

 

[Chinchilla]

Hi,

Have you considered stopping the bottles? And cup feeding instead?

When my baby was little we gave him lots of bottles and soon he refused to breastfeed properly. I got help to return to full breastfeeding. But the first thing I had to do was stop giving bottles. This was making the problem worse.

So I started cup feeding him. This sounds difficult but it was really quite easy when I got the hang of it. You need to hold your baby on your lap in an upright supported position and then hold the cup to baby's lips and tilt it until the milk just reaches his lips. Then let your baby lap up the milk and swallow at his own pace. I used a small flexible plastic cup about the size of the bottle lid and filled it to the half way mark.

After a couple of days my baby didn?t mess about so much when I tried to breastfeed him. I got help from a lactation consultant and she taught me a special hold called the asymmetrical latch. This let the baby get as much milk as possible when feeding.

Once my baby was latching well again I used a nursing supplementer because my supply was so low because of all the bottles. This was great because I was able to let me give formula to my baby and breastfeed at the same time.

Over the next four weeks I slowly replaced the formula with expressed milk and more breastfeeding. And from ten weeks onwards Brad was a fully breastfed baby.

It was really worth all the effort. I just love the happy smiles he gives me while I?m feeding him.

Good luck,
Chinchilla

 

[LLL_Sarah]

There is a video showing cup feeding at http://www.breastfeeding.com/aaavideo/cup1.mov

And instructions on how to cup feed at http://www.foleycup.com/pages/support.html

Medela sell two products to help you cup feed: http://www.meridianhk.com.hk/special_feeding_main.html

Soft Cup Feeder (this is shown in the video) and is basically a spoon.

Cup Feeder ? this is basically a small cup.

You can use a normal spoon and a normal cup but Medela have designed their products to be easier to use. After all who would buy them if there was no advantage to them? Most mothers I?ve talked to who used these cup feeders liked them, especially as there was less wastage of the milk ? a very important factor when it is your own expressed milk.

Best wishes,
SARAH

 

[mandz]

Huge Problems

Hey

I also had huge problems in the first three months. We cup fed Miah for 8 weeks. I ended up getting advice to change my diet and within 24 hours we were reducing the top ups signigicantly. So I'm a believer in what you eat helps create a great milk supply.

Good luck

Amanda

ps Don't forget MONDAY

 

[joannek]

do try to contact Mrs chee so that she can come to your place to help you. Sarah is right, it is best to get face to face help. Also, seeing Mrs Chee also give you emotional support & let you know that it is possible. I highly recommend Mrs Chee because she's the one to help me w/ my problems when i was struggling during the first several months. Her cell phone is usually set to the voice mail, leave her a message & she soons reply. I regretted not leaving her a message when i first contacted her when my baby was 3 wks old (cos everytime i called her, it was on voice mail). i contacted someone else (who's also mentioned here) cos she answered the phone right away. this other person not only didn't solve my problem after a lot of pain, she was rough & unsensitive. anyway, do call mrs chee.

good luck!

 

[niutalent]

Also, the WHO has just issued new guidelines on what constitues a "normal" weight and height for all children from newborns to 5 years old. They have based it on samples of children from all over the world (not just the U.S. as the previous chart) who have been EXCLUSIVELY breastfed for the first 6 months. So what normally would have constituted an 'underweight' child, (usually an exclusively breastfed one) is really probably at a normal weight.

The same thing happened to me, after 6 weeks, I was told that my baby was very underweight and strongly encouraged to give her formula. When I was only giving her 2 bottles a day, I was told "not to be so stingy" and to give her more bottles, much to my dismay. I don't think this is advice peds. would give in countries such as my native Canada.