September 2014 Moms

Can babies "forget" how to nurse?

Or just have an off day? We are just having a terrible go at this nursing thing. First, there was the excruciating nipple pain, which is finally cleared up thanks to some prescription ointment. Then, we found out that she had not gained a single ounce in 6 days. Now we're on a strict schedule of daytime feeds every 2 hours with supplementation of pumped milk right after. She had been having a couple bottles of pumped milk every day for the last few days and doing fine going back and forth between the breast and the bottle, but today she is unable to latch at the breast. She's getting frustrated, screaming, and pulling away, which means that after 5 minutes of this, I'm in the kitchen warming up a bottle for her. I know this is contributing to the problem, but she has to eat, so I feel like my hands are tied.

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Re: Can babies "forget" how to nurse?

  • Thanks, AmyG. Is there a better way to supplement? We had been using a curved-tip syringe at the breast while she nursed when we were only giving her .5 ounce at a time, but now she's needing at least 1-2 ounces extra to be satisfied after a feed, and it's hard for me to nurse and fill the syringe several times throughout the feed.

    Would it be more effective to use a finger and the curved-tip syringe, or is that similar to using a bottle?
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  • I don't know the answer but my son has been doing the same thing the last two days and I'm so frustrated I want to give up! My oldest didn't do this so I'm confused as to what the problem is. It's seriously like he suddenly forgot how to latch. If you find an answer let me know. I hope it's nothing and they go back to latching sooner than later.
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  • Don't give up. I have to supplement with formula and we have off days where she doea the same thing. ..she just cries and screams at my boob when I offer it. It seems to happen when she's overly hungry since she'll latch right on to the bottle and gulp down the formula. On those days, I give her the bottle first to take the edge off with a small.amount of formula and then offer my boob.
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  • You can also try paced bottle feeding where you let her suck at the bottle for a few moments then remove it so she has a short break and start over. This was she's not getting the satisfaction of eating at all at once as fast as can. It was recommended to me by my LC when I was having issues with my first born. She also recommended sitting baby more upright.
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  • I have no advice other than keep up the hard work and a story the LC told me. She had a mom who's baby had like the perfect latch the day she was born. Stuck to just bfing and then overnight the baby decided to stop sucking and just start licking her breasts. Licking. She said it wasn't the hardest thing to fix bit definitely the oddest problem she's seen. So I guess babies can forget how to do it all..


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  • Mine will sometimes scream and push away from the breast when she's grumpy. My lc recommended instead of having her lay tummy against me, to angle her so her butt is about 6 to 8 inches away. This takes away her leverage so she can't force her head back as strongly. after she latches on you can move her body closer. Kind of awkward at first but It worked really well for me.
  • I had to switch to EPing for a couple of weeks, then slowly reintroduce the breast (which I'm still doing) due to several issues with LO's latch after she had her tongue-tie clipped. When I first started reintroducing the breast, we had a lot of trouble. I ended up changing bottles and switching to paced bottle feeding. That made a huge difference. Bottle feeding should mimic breastfeeding as much as possible if you're doing both. Once LO had to do some work at the bottle, she stopped preferring it over the breast.
  • Thanks ladies!

    We have seen a LC three times. She took 2 oz at one feeding and just .5 ounces at another feeding. So since I have no idea how much she's taking at any one time, we're offering .5 oz at a time after she nurses until she seems satisfied. I'll try making her work for the bottle and see if that helps, although she seems to be doing slightly better nursing today.
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