34 wk Preemie nursing great, but nurses saying he shouldn't - Page 2

[sbrinton]

Are you using a nipple shield when you try to breastfeed?

That made a huge difference for us. It's much easier for preemies to stay latched on to the breast with the nipple shield. They can relax while eating without the nipple falling out of their mouth, so they don't have to expend so much energy.

I think using the nipple shield also makes it a little easier for the LOs to switch between breast and bottle.

We used a nipple shield in the NICU and when we were home until we were a few weeks past Zeph's due date. We stopped when I was confident he was strong enough to nurse without it...and sort of let him get hungry enough to figure out breastfeeding without the shield. He did, and he's still nursing great 10 months later!

[DocsNemesis]

One thing I would note is if he's allowed to nurse on demand, watch how often he eats on his own. When we came home and I let my ds make his own schedule, first via bottle and then via breast (I was like a pp and didn't even try nursing in the hospital more than a few times, it just wasn't going well for us-he learned how to nurse on his due date), he would take much smaller amounts and crash, but either wake up on his own to eat some more within an hour, or I would wake him up to eat. If he was REALLY out, I just left him alone-I figured he needed the sleep then. But most of the time waking him up wasn't hard. He'd fall back to sleep within 10 minutes, but still take a couple ounces of milk before hand.

If he's still really sleepy and hard to wake up, then he probably isn't ready to be completely bottle or breast fed. Especially with the breast, its so comforting they tend to fall asleep even faster. I would still be giving it a go as much as possible since he already has the hang of it, but he might just need more growing time before he's ready to go completely to breast. Like I said, my son was still very sleepy but there was a difference between when he was a week old and impossible to wake up at all and a month old when he could be woken up fairly easily and eat for a bit before falling back to sleep.

(I just remembered trying to nurse him for the first time at about a week old and him latching on, sucking twice, and then completely falling back to sleep )