Feeding

Why is something so natural as breastfeeding so difficult?!

With the assistance (read poking, prodding and pulling!) of many a midwife over the past 3 weeks we have been unable to get Lily to feed from the breast.

Up until now she has been feeding well from the nipple shield and because this diminishes supply I have been pumping at most feeds to keep the stimulation up.

Up until now, occasionally Lily would at night still be hungry after the breast and so I would top her up with EBM.

I was very proud as up until Friday night we had gone for 3 days with no EBM top up. I was very happy that things appeared to be progressing in the right direction.

This was until on Friday when a lactation consultant advised me to feed Lily from a bigger shield to encourage her to open her mouth up wide, this would help with attaching to the breast.

Well that didn't work and resulted in a very unsettled night on Friday night. Yesterday was even worse, and resulted in Lily being awake and very unsettled/screaming when put down from 4:00pm until 2:00am this morning.

She is pretty well refusing to feed from me at all even though she is clearly hungry, yet will drink, sorry gulp EBM from the bottle.

Sometimes she will attach to the shield and just do little comfort sucks but will not feed from me.

So this leaves me where? The only way I can feed my daughter is with EBM from the bottle.

This breaks my heart. I have not been able to breastfeed Lily at all. She has not once attached and fed properly from the breast.

This leaves me feeling horribly inadequate and broken, I just don't know what to do.