Help latching early baby

[Mrs W 11]

I'm desperate for advice as I'm really struggling to breastfeed my new baby! He was born early at 35 weeks and is a week old today (so 36 weeks gestation).

I started hand expressing and am now pumping so he's purely tube fed my breast milk every 3 hours. Before almost every feed I wake him up and try to bf. He's awake and hungry, and keen to feed but it is not happening! We've tried different positions, nipple shields, various techniques and nothing works. He opens his mouth and tries to suck but doesn't latch and so just comes off.

We can't leave until feeding is established and with a 4 year old at home I'm getting really frustrated as we are not making any progress we are going backwards if anything as several days ago he did latch and feed several times but fell asleep within minutes. The bf expert says it's all normal and to relax with skin to skin and wait for him to be ready but how long do I wait?!

Any advice or experience welcome!

 

[noon_child]

He is early, so I think it is to be expected that he's not going to be as ready as some term babies are and he is going to get tired quickly. Have you tried the biological nurturing approach - laid back with LO on your chest, following his instinct to latch, letting him explore the nipple (grabbing, licking, butting, chewing the nipple are all normal parts of getting to know what he's doing and here he needs to get to, it isn't him 'failing' to feed or doing anything wrong somehow).

Has he been checked for jaundice? This can make babies very sleepy and is common in premature babies. Once they wake up a bit after some treatment they get better at latching.

Can he suck when presented with a finger for example?