breastfeeding problems!

[msq]

My baby is almost 3 weeks old, he was in the NICU and got bottles. I was just pumping and bottle feeding but have been trying to breastfeed but having a lot of trouble. He will sometimes do well and take a full feeding at the breast and then the next feeding will be awful! He will push away from me, scream his head off and refuse to latch and if he does latch he will only latch onto my nipple which hurts so bad! or he will suck a couple times and let go and cry, or just fall asleep. it is so frustrating i have basically given up. i am trying to wean from pumping and have pretty much given up on bf'ing too. it is causing serious emotional issues for me and i have not been very nice to anyone around me when i am trying to feed him. i wanted to breastfeed so badly and i feel like a failure for not being able to. or like i havent tried hard enough to give up :/ idk what to do...

 

[_Meep_]

I know that feeling. I used to get so frustrated and snap at OH when my daughter was fussing at the breast and refusing to eat.

Eventually I realised that sometimes I was trying to feed her because I thought she should be hungry, but actually she just wasn't. Are you trying to feed him to a schedule?

Once I relaxed and tried not to mind so much when my baby would refuse, it got a lot easier. I was misreading her signals and clock-watching far too much. So now I just offer if she seems upset and if she doesn't want to, I try again a bit later. As long as she is hungry, she will take a good feed.

It can be really hard in the beginning though if they are very sleepy and you worry they won't get enough milk ...

The fact that you say he does latch and take a good feed at times implies that he can do it if he wants to - so if he doesn't want to, then he won't. How often is he feeding generally? My baby used to make a shallow latch when she found that milk still came out when she wanted to comfort suck without eating. She would become furious when she ended up with a mouthful of unwanted milk lol.

 

[pinkpassion]

I had some issues with nipple confusion, especially in the beginning.. it took time for my dd to switch back and forth easily.. like 6+ weeks, even now she has her times when she's being lazy and just prefers a bottle. Can you continue pumping and just keep offering the breast for now? I have read so many times where mom's will pump and bottle and then one day baby just "gets" it and breast feeds great, that happened to me after going through a bit of a sudden bad latch around 9 weeks? .. took about 3 weeks for her to straighten out!

 

[noon_child]

I agree with Meep.

If you are sure he is hungry, and think he wants the speed of a bottle, then you could syringe a couple of mouthfuls of expressed milk in to his mouth to take the urgency off his hunger, then try relatching.

Also wind can make babies think they are hungry but then they struggle to actually feed so it may be worth trying to get a burp out.

It sound soooooooooooo normal. I lived in a constant cycle of trying to latch, trying to burp, trying to settle to sleep. When one didn't work after a while I just cycled round to the next option. Repeat…..
And remember not all babies give clear cues and we are all playing "give us a clue" for those first months!