Hello everyone,

I am new to the infant care board. My son was born on Nov 18th, 6 lb and 9 oz. He is a healthy baby , but a little tiny. He is 11 days old today, but is till unable to latch on to my breast. We are trying aids like the nipple shield with milk igetsed through a syringe etc. However, these tricks do not always work, he is eager to feed from me but is unable to do so and gets frustrated and starts crying. I am also using a nursing pillow to support him while nursing.

This is my first born and I am really concerned about his inability to feed. A frew others wo delivered alongwith me have no problems with nursing at all, their babies seem to do this insitinctively. He is able to latch to my left breast only at times, he is unable to do it on the right side.

His skin is peeling all over the body, should we apply any lotion to this? I hear this is normal in new borns.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

hello!

Don't give up!!! It took my son 3 months to learn how to breast feed and I believe that it was 'my' technique that was wrong.

My daughter is 2 months old and now that I learned the 'right' technique from my son, she breastfed from the start no problem.

I thought that you just put the nipple part in the mouth of the baby and they suck and get milk......lol , which is not the case!

You have to give them the entire nipple areola and all!

I use the 'C' cup position and use my thumb and index finger and squeeze under the 'whole' nipple and areola and kind of shove it into the babies mouth until they suck and latch!

They may get fussy and pull away, but keep shoving your breast in their mouth and they should latch....

ps. I use the cradle position~
I hope this helps!

my 2wk old had some trouble latching at first too, and i found it was much easier to do in the clutch or football hold b/c i could control his head and see exactly what was happening. now that he's got the hang of it we can do cradle hold too, but he still finds the football hold easier.

hey there,

since the breast feeding problem seems to have been answered already, thought i'd tell you about the dry skin problem. you can extract a little breast milk and dab it onto the skin of your little one. don't rub it in because he'll turn all red (the skin is very sensitive when they're so young!). i used breast milk on my daughter, who had the same problem (as many newborns do, like you said), and it worked like a charm! do it for as much as he needs it, but i can almost guarantee you he'll be much better after a couple of times! breast milk is great for a whole bunch of problems, such as, crusty or infected eyes, stuffy nose, dry skin, rashes etc. my mom even told me that you can put some in their bath water and it will make their skin soft. I don't have all that much to spare as it is, so i don't do that, but if you have an abundance, why not? better than throw it out!

let me know if it worked for you too!! ;)

Befer.