Rather than give formula to this baby who is not growing well, finding
some other way to get more breastmilk in is my preference.  Mom has a
great supply, so this is not the limiting factor, the baby's ability to
take in the milk probably is.

I've seen babies with DS and very severe cardiac defects do well when
mom bf them every 5 minutes for a few seconds, or whatever their aerobic
capacity would allow.  If the baby is able to bf well for short spurts,
mom could just wear him in a sling and let him have the breast very,
very frequently.  I realize that not evey mom can or will do this, but
it is an option that could be offered to her.

Another option is to use a Haberman feeder (forgive me, I forgot if this
is being used already) but with small amounts of milk more often rather
than larger ones less often.

The baby I used the periodontal syringe with recently had a central
vagus nucleus hypersensitivity secondary to an intraventricular
hemorrage, and when she'd forget to swallow (she had absolutely NO oral
experience for the first month of her life, other than having an og tube
shoved down her throat) she'd go into bradycardia.  She could not take 3
drops of milk at first, but with excrutiatingly slow fingerfeeding with
the periodontal syringe (which allows very tiny droplets to be given)
she learned to swallow.  She's now taking 60cc from the Haberman and 4-6
cc from the breast.  She has other problems besides the prematurity and
the brain bleed, she also has a genetic syndrome that causes extreme
hypotonia and feeding problems.  She's doing absolutely amazingly.  We
did a lot of other interventions in handling, support, pacifier "tug of
war" during gavage feedings, etc.

--
Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC  New York City  mailto:[log in to unmask]

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html