Newborn fists blocking the boob ^^'

[Marumi]

Does anyone's baby do this? Mine is an extreme example. As soon as I bring his little hungry self to the breast his fists firmly block his face while he leaps back and squirms. Especially at night he just does not recognize the nipple even if I manage to get it in his mouth so he gets really fussy and often even cries in anger while clawing my boobs...
I wonder where a newborn gets all this strength too.

My first never did this btw.

This article made me laugh: https://www.sdbfc.com/blog/2012/5/2...e-they-always-in-the-way-while-breastfee.html

Sums it up perfectly.

 

[crownest]

My 5 month old still trys to get his hands as well as nipple into his mouth. I generally let him hold onto my finger to distract him.

 

[Natasha2605]

Freya does this

Especially if she's woke from a nap hungry. Her little head bobs about whilst she fights with her fists. She does eventually stop it though, she likes to keep her hands on the breast while she's feeding though.

 

[minties]

Sophie did this as a newborn, was so frustrating. I used to have to swaddle her to nurse.

 

[babyjan]

Yep mine does this! Sometimes it looks like his punching the boob away

 

[noon_child]

Its a feeding reflex to help babies locate the nipple on their own and stimulate letdown of milk. It is VERY FRUSTRATING when you can see that you have lined them up perfectly with the nipple and they are still fighting to find it! Thing is, they aren't expecting to be "put on" the breast, some babies have these very strong reflexes to find it themselves. Sometimes reclined feeding / laid back feeding / biological nurturing (whichever you want to call it) can be helpful as it uses the baby's reflexes rather than fighting against them. If you watch a young baby doing bio nurturing quite often they have their hand over the nipple and are sucking their hand - it LOOKS like they don't know what they are doing but actually for a creature that has poor eyesight when newborn, and such heavy head, they are using that hand to connect nipple and mouth (almost draw a line between the two). If they can find the nipple with their hand, and their hand with their mouth then they can work out more easily how to find the nipple with their mouth.

 

[Bevziibubble]

James does this too. He's hungry and then gets frustrated because he's eating his hands and not getting milk out of them

 

[kdmalk]

This was an epic battle for us for the first few months. He would get so frustrated!

 

[m0mmyCool]

Mine did this with his fists in the first few weeks. He would also cry while I tried to nurse him and would pull away. I used to get so frustrated I would cry too. Thankfully we got through it and he bf's well now.

 

[DaisyDreamer]

Z still does this especially when he is hungry and agitated. For a while he would squeeze my boobs with his fists, open his mouth and shake his head around trying to latch

Also squeezing my nipple with one side of his hand and sucking his hand on the other side to latch. Very interesting to see their reflexes at work.

I've also read that their hands help massage the breast to get all the milk out