Born at 36w4d - poor feeding (always sleeping!)

[GenYsuperlady]

I know there are many of you here dealing with much more serious health problems in your LOs, and living in the NICU, so my issues may seem a bit trivial, but I'm hoping for a bit of understanding, support or just shared experiences.

My first baby, a girl, was born at 36w4d after PROM and induced labor. I'm super lucky that she is mostly healthy, but from the get go, she has been too tired to feed. Breastfeeding especially wears her out, so she is getting EBM through a bottle with a little "practice time" on the breast a few times a day when she is awake enough.

She had finally gained some weight at her one week visit yesterday, but I am still so worried and stressed. We have to wake her for each and every feed (every 4 hours at night and every 2-3 hours during the day). Then it takes at least 30 but usually closer to 60 minutes to coax her to take the full 60mL she is supposed to get. Then it's back to sleep for an hour before we have to rouse her again. Today, she just won't finish any of her feeds...she eats practically half-asleep and after about 45-50mL her mouth and suck/swallow just go limp. We even had to syringe feed her again today which we haven't had to do since she was discharged at 4 days old.

It doesn't help that I definitely have a case of the baby blues (and wow, isn't that way too soft a term for the massive hurricane of emotions and tears I'm experiencing?).

Did anyone else have a sleepy, early baby, and when did they "wake up?"

 

[lilbeanhoping]

My lil guy was born at 35weeks exactly. He was a lot like this. We spent a week in nicu dealing with breathing and feeding issues and waiting for his lungs to mature.
Our week in the nicu, up until the day we left, we really struggled to get him to finish his 50mls he had to have in less than 45min.
I exclusively express and feed with a bottle and try to get him on the breast but up until the last couple days have had no success.
He "woke up" about a week ago, which was still 5days before his actual due date. At that point we no longer had to wake him up to feed and he started waking up and crying when he was hungry about every 3-3.5hrs (never thought I'd be happy to hear my baby crying in the middle of the night!)
Just 2-3days ago he started really sucking on the bottle and when I attempted breastfeeding today he was doing really well!

Some suggestions I have, which u may have already heard many times before (sorry):
-get her naked/change her diaper before feeding to wake her up
- feed her in a seated position (her on your lap, your hand behind neck-make sure not to tilt head forward or she can't swallow), keeping away from your torso so she can't snuggle in and get comfy
-have daddy or someone else feed her! Whenever I tried to feed my lo he got super comfortable and always fell asleep, it took an awesome nurse who told me that it was very common for babies to fall asleep with their mom because they can smell you and get comfortable so they just fall asleep. When I was told this I left the feeding to the nurses in the hospital! And daddy at hme for the first while and then he'd eat way better, still slowly but better than with me. After we were home a few days I then was feeding him in that seated position and he did way better

Other than that I know it's hard but just try to relax and keep working at it. It'll get better

 

[lozzy21]

I used to save nappy changes untill half way through her feed. Feed her as much as she will take then onces she starts to get sleepy then change her nappy, the colder the wipes the better lol this wakes her up to take the rest of her feed.

 

[GenYsuperlady]

Thank you so much, both of you. I cannot wait to hear that hungry cry!!!

 

[lilbeanhoping]

Thank you so much, both of you. I cannot wait to hear that hungry cry!!!

It'll come! Then u too can get the funny look from friends when u excitedly tell them how loud your lo can ask for food and how they have finally found their voice/lungs! Haha

 

[DonnaBallona]

We welcome everybody here GenY!

Unfortunately, i have no advice other than what has already been mentioned-but i hope your LO continues to grow stronger (and louder!) each day.

xx

 

[GenYsuperlady]

I know it's the hormones but I'm about to cry at the kind words!! They give me so much hope...especially since I hope to breastfeed once she wakes up enough. For now she will latch but falls into a coma immediately, so pumping and bottles are the other best option for now.

 

[dizz]

Trust me - give it 6 months and you'll look back on it and wonder where the hell the baby that didn't want food and just wanted to sleep went! My daughter (born at 33 weeks - discharged from hospital around the 35 week mark but still very sleepy and jaundiced) was very like that - we'd end up basically playing a game of Strip Bottle to get her to take a full feed - gradually shedding clothing and changing her nappy mid-feed... and then suddenly she just took off and flew up the amount of feed she'd take.

Now she's a 7 month old who devours solids and complains if the spoon's not coming fast enough, can spot a bottle of milk from a mile away and if you don't deliver it at an acceptable speed (pausing to take the cap off is NOT an acceptable delay), will grab it out of your hands and feed herself!

Remember to think of her in terms of her adjusted age (based off her due date - not her date of actual birth) - even most newborns (and she's not even one of them officially yet) would be very sleepy still!

Oh and be kind to yourself - the pumping/feeding/changing/pumping treadmill is a brutal way to live - I did it for a while in the hope she'd learn to latch - in the end the breastpump motor died and I was falling apart under the strain of it and not getting any chance to actually enjoy being her mum - it was just "Oh gawd wake up and take this feed so I can go put the blooming pump parts back together yet again" and getting ridiculous!

 

[W22KLB]

Hi my daughter was born at 35 +6 and also had the same problem, we found that feeding her as already mentioned (away from my heartbeat) and using the next size teat (size 2 tommee tippee) made the world of difference, as she was working too hard on the size 1 teats which made her tired. I did this on the advice of the neonatel midwife.

Good luck.

 

[GenYsuperlady]

Dizz -- I love your description of Strip Bottle!!! That definitely adds a bit of humor to the otherwise stressful event May I ask when your LO started to wake up? I do keep having to be reminded that she is not even at her due date yet...so sleeping in the womb is all she is meant to be doing at the moment! And thank you for the note on taking care of myself...I sometimes think the breast pump is going to explode! When did you make the switch to FF?

W22 - interesting about the faster flow nipples! The one we are using from the hospital is just a plain Playtex slow flow, but we've noticed that the Dr. Brown's newborn nipple is a faster flow so we've started experimenting with that.

To all of you, thank you again. I just got a call from the lactation consultant who has reduced our feedings down to 8 a day from 9. I cried out of sheer joy! Hopefully now she will have a little time to consider waking up for her feeds since she will be getting more rest!!!!

 

[dizz]

I think it was about 1 1/2 months actual age that suddenly she was alert and I was like "shit ok - what do I do with her when she's not asleep all the time?!" Which was also about the point where her weight gain took off and she got ON to the weight charts as well.

I actually burnt the motor on the breast pump out - made it to the equivalent of her being just after full-term, she still couldn't latch so that was the point where we called it and went onto formula (I'd been pumping to try to keep my options open). I just realised we'd been trying for 6 years for this little girl, and all I was doing was changing her nappy and handing her to her daddy to feed so I could hook myself up to a breast pump yet again and I wasn't getting to enjoy her! Then the pump starting to fail kind of forced the issue a bit more and we really had to think things through.

 

[ashleyann]

I totally understand how frustrating feeding issues can be.. We weren't in the NICU long compared to some (17 days) although it felt like eternity but I remember thinking he was never going to get the hang of it. He would just sleep and sleep and they expected him to eat so much every 3 hours but he would never be awake so they would have to give it to him through the tube..and they would just keep upping the amount that he would have to take and uughhh it was soo frustrating. But slowly as he got bigger he would get hungrier and stronger and he got the hang of it. They always said it would be like a light bulb goes off in him one day and that's exactly what happened. It is so hard I know..
But I'm sitting home with my now almost 4 month old who definitely is not shy about letting me know when he is hungry..it will come. Hang in there!xo