Breastfeeding

Hi mummies, my LO is 8days old. Currently pumping exclusively not latching. Im facing three problems.. 1) as much as I want him to latch on, he falls asleep everytime he latches and he can latch up to an hour if i prompt him. He doesn’t suckle fast too. He will take in a few mouthful and stop and i have to keep prompting. Im not sure if he has enough even though he latches for so long. Thats why i stopped latching. 2) my left and right breast yield very different in amount of breastmilk. Right side is always twice the amount of left side but my breastpad is always full on the left side. What should i do? 3) he has been sleeping shorter timings from 2-3hours to 1hour plus and wakes up for milk. Do i increase the milk intake? Currently he takes in 60ml. I pump 2-3hours each day. LO is 3.6kg prob alittle heavier now. He can’t really sleep well and fusses in his sleep.

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Super Mum

Hi dear, everything you’ve described is very normal:) 1) he’s latching both for feeding and for comfort.. and because it’s so comfortable, falling asleep is common, and he may sleep-suckle, hence leading to 1hr latches. However, in between the gentle sucks, if another let down reflex comes, they usually do drink up the milk well. 2) perfectly normal to have one breast produce more than the other. You can try pumping that side more to try to get it to produce more milk, but for me, I just live with the imbalance, since my LO does get enough. Especially at the beginning, I didn’t want to waste any milk, so I used the breastmilk collection cup on the side that baby wasn’t latching on. I didn’t buy branded ones, just $3+ per pair on Shopee. I’d pour the collected milk into a bottle and store it for a future feed. You see, even if you’re not latching that side, when a let down reflex comes, a gush of milk will be released on both sides, which is a huge waste on the side baby’s not on. For long latches, I’ve sometimes even had 3-4 reflexes and collected up to 50ml of milk on the other side. 3) Baby needs at least 150ml/kg/day at this age, so you can divide that among the number of feeds he requires. But 60ml is probably appropriate for his stomach size now. Cluster feeding is also quite common initially, and there are quite a number of growth spurts (more feeding, sometimes more sleep, sometimes less sleep) within the first 2 months too. The feeding regime will gradually stabilise. Hang in there.. it’s a learning journey and baby will hopefully settle down into a routine within the next 2 months:)

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TapFluencer

Usually baby needs time to adapt in how to latch properly. Lazy boobs is normal. Where one side tend to have more than the other. You can try to pump the lazy side more. Baboes usually fuss when they are hungry. When baby is full usually they will just sleep.

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