Hey ladies, breastfeeding is a real struggle for us. My son latches on awkwardly, and if he nurses f…

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Hey ladies, breastfeeding is a real struggle for us. My son latches on awkwardly, and if he nurses for too long, he gets fussy and refuses, but he doesn't finish his feed. We started using nipple shields in the maternity ward and did a weighted feed: he'd nurse for half an hour, then stop, but only drink half the norm (then we'd top him up with a bottle). The nurse back then said the norm per feeding is: on the 4th day 40ml per feed, on the 5th day 50ml, and so on. I'm curious, up to what age will the volume increase by 10ml per feeding? At home, we also follow a priority system: first the breast, then the shield, and only then do we give him expressed milk from a bottle. But I feel like he doesn't control how much he drinks from the bottle. He might hang on the breast and shield for 40-50 minutes, then take 40-50ml of milk. Although I can see he's sucking from the breast, and from the shield too (when he spits out the breast, it's covered in milk). When he drinks a lot, I monitor his condition: he spits up just air, before sleep he might play with his fingers near his face, make faces, poop and pee well, but he passes out so deeply that I have to wake him for the next feeding (they told us in the maternity ward to wake him if he doesn't wake up every 3-4 hours). I want to buy a baby scale to occasionally check how much he's drinking from the breast so I can top him up with the right amount. Are there any guidelines for newborn feeding norms? Or am I just overthinking it and it's better to let him decide how much expressed milk to finish?
Напишу для себя на память. А может быть, кому-то тоже будет интересен мой опыт. П. С. Пост у меня по…
Comments
Nastya
You won't be able to track weight gain accurately with breastfeeding. It doesn't work that way. Babies on breast milk gain weight in spurts. If you want to continue breastfeeding, just keep offering the breast to your baby constantly, even every half hour. And no pacifiers. If you start supplementing, you'll eventually switch to formula. I can't advise on formula amounts, as my baby is exclusively breastfed.
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Lora
You need to look at weight gain, not how much the baby consumed. I never had a lot of milk. My daughter would nurse for 5 minutes maximum. But she gained 1 kg per month.
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Tatyana
Just a weekly weigh-in... at least once a week...
No pacifiers...
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Ekaterina Salina
Weighing before and after feeding isn't informative. How do you plan to account for wet diapers and poops during feeding?
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Yulichka Sidorik
Ekaterina Salina At the maternity ward, they weighed him before feeding, as he was. I fed him and immediately gave him back for weighing in the same clothes. If he peed or pooped, they weighed him first, then I changed his diaper. They weren't looking at his specific weight, but his weight in the swaddle and diaper, with everything that was inside him before feeding, and then outside.
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Yulichka Sidorik
Tatyana Trying to wean off pacifiers... We're going to the maternity ward for a weigh-in on Thursday, and I'd like to be able to weigh her at home too, so I'm looking at baby scales...
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Tatyana
Tatyana And if it's possible, let it hang on your chest..
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Yulichka Sidorik
Lora The thing is, I have enough milk for two babies if they empty the breast. He usually stays on the breast for a long time, but with fussiness, he spits it out, has a tantrum, I keep trying to put it back in his mouth, and sometimes it works and he latches on without tantrums, although he still spits it out (at this point, everything is covered in milk from the baby to my stomach)... so out of their "hour" on the breast, half the time is spent on coaxing and tantrums... In the maternity hospital, they did a test weighing after which they wanted to put him on formula, but at least I fought for my milk and we started supplementing with expressed milk...
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Aleksandra
Lora So he doesn't have colic?? Usually, with colic, a baby is hungry but can't take the breast
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Anastasiya
Alisa, ask them to check the frenulum. My older child had trouble latching due to a short frenulum, and the problem disappeared immediately after it was clipped.
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Yulichka Sidorik
Tatyana We're trying, both of us...
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Tatyana
Tatyana Don't give up!
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Yulichka Sidorik
Lora So, we're hungry, but we can't latch... We've started trying to deal with colic. In the hospital, I tried to convince the nurses that his tummy hurt, but they tried to convince me for 4 days that it wasn't the case. Then, after I spent the night with him because I simply can't breastfeed him, and expressing milk with a screaming baby is tough, the nurse finally admitted that it might be, but "almost everyone has this, you just have to endure it, there's nothing to do." During the day, he's more or less okay with latching, even with persuasion and hysterics, but at night we almost immediately switch to expressing milk... He won't latch at all in this state
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Yulichka Sidorik
Anastasiya The pediatrician is coming soon, I was thinking about that too. I'll ask them to take a look.
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Yulichka Sidorik
Anastasiya Oh, you've given birth too? Congratulations! 🥰
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Yulichka Sidorik
Tatyana Yes, it's hard, but I'm trying. At least now she takes the breast before the bottle, which is progress compared to the maternity ward when she refused immediately and cried.
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Anastasiya
Anastasiya yes, the 5th) thank you ❤️
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