Nikki beat me to it.  I too was going to suggest that this mother and baby try to "re-boot:"  Get into bed or on the couch, true skin-to-skin.  Mom is reclined, not flat on her back.  Baby is prone, placed face-down on her torso, using the sternum for a pillow.  

Hopefully they start this out when baby is NOT furious.  Mom uses her bands to stroke and touch; she smooches baby's head if she wants (and how could she NOT want to do that?).  She lets her own and the baby's reflexes do the work.  She is speaking loving, sweet nothings into baby's ears.  Although the evidence these days suggests that early brain development really requires this physical placement on the chest to keep the baby in what he considers his safe secure environment.  Maybe we ought now to call those mommy murmurings "sweet everythings!"

As baby bobs, pushes up or wiggles closer to the nipple for latch, mom's arms and hands are simply "bumpers" to protect the baby -- without rules or required maneuvers -- in what Tina Smillie elegantly calls a "motherbaby [no space] dance."  Let the baby take that "forever" 15, 30, 60 seconds to get to the nipple, get the hands "in the way," bob the head, open a few times, try on a latch for size ... and finally viola! get to the sweet spot where the chin is planted on the breast, the wide gape is triggered, and we have Latch On!  

Cathy Genna's teaching about the importance of the baby's hands to the entire process has really helped *me* to quit moving the baby's hands away.  I try not to verbally interfere too much with what the mother's helping instincts are ... but I will explain sometimes (as they reach to capture and restrain a baby hand) that baby's hands are an important guidance system for the feeding.  Maybe we should suggest that "GPS" really means: Get Proper Suckling!

I tell moms that babies who aren't feeding well in the early days are every bit as frustrated as the parents.  Sometimes parents interpret these baby frustrations as anger or dislike of the breast, and I often see that "lightbulb go off" in the mother's eyes when she re-imagines her baby as just plain furious with frustration -- and not furious with her wonderful breasts and milk.

Liz Brooks JD IBCLC FILCA

Sent from my iPad
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