How do you know baby needs to eat?
After the initial feeding, baby enters deep sleep, often for the next 24 hours! It can be difficult to get them to nurse. Watch for subtle signs such as
- Rapid eye movement or eye fluttering
- Stretching
- Licking the lips and mouthing
If you see this, try not to wait; go ahead and offer a feeding, especially if it’s been more than 4 hours. Sometimes expressing drops of colostrum onto baby’s lips or tongue can get them up and interested. Another technique is to get them naked but for a diaper and place skin to skin. The proximity to the smell of your breasts can awaken them and your body heat helps stabilize them if they don’t eat right then.
After that sleepy period, baby shows more active signs such as
- Eye opening
- Head turning
- Moving arms and legs
- Bringing hand to mouth
- Sucking and smacking
- Rooting or turning towards a touch on the cheek
Crying is a late sign. If baby is crying, calm them first before attempting to latch.
However, now to confuse us all: babies show feeding cues when they are hungry, but also when they are thirsty, and again if they need any sort of comfort! Go ahead and offer the breast first, but if your baby is pushing away, it may be something as simple as a diaper change.
And the baby who has been hard to wake and feed the initial 24 hours, suddenly wakes up and pulls a very fussy all-nighter. It even has a name – Second Night Syndrome. Totally normal, but also not very fun. Your baby starts making up feeds by clustering their nursing, which can be back to back. And since babies already have their days and nights mixed up, chances are, once they have recovered from being born, they are going to be alert when you are ready to crash. Try to get a nap in before it starts. And if baby doesn’t really need to eat, tag team with your support person.
Positions and Latch
What these positions all have in common is, baby is facing mom and starting nose to nipple. You stroke baby’s top lip with the nipple. When baby opens wide, you bring baby to you. You do not try to shove your breast into baby’s mouth, but bring baby onto the breast. Up, over the nipple, not on it. Imagine how you eat a hamburger, or an apple.
A deep, asymmetrical latch will have the baby taking all of the nipple and most of the areola, with more of the bottom of the areola than the top. Pain occurs when the nipple is being rubbed and compressed on the hard palate and not when the baby is latched more deeply with the nipple far enough back in the mouth to be on the soft palate. The nose is just touching the breast. Even if you can’t see the nose from your vantage point, refrain from pulling the breast away as this will change the latch, pulling the nipple to the hard palate, causing pain and decreased milk flow. If baby can’t breathe, baby will release the breast.
Remember, breastfeeding should not hurt. If it does, it’s time to get help.