Hello Lactnetters,

I've been lurking over here in Victoria BC for a few weeks now.  I'm a
breastfeeding counsellor, childbirth educator and doula.  Last spring I had
some luck helping a mom to get a baby onto the breast after he had spent
three weeks being fed EBM by bottle.  He too screamed and carried on when
put to the breast.  The mom is, quite rightly, very pleased with herself and
has given me permission to tell everyone about her triumph!

We started by feeding him in the football hold, skin to skin at the breast -
mimicking the BF situation exactly - except that his mother gave him EBM
from a bottle with the biggest nipple we could find (a toddler-sized Nuk).
The mom would put the nipple as far back as possible into the baby's mouth,
encouraging him to "flange" his lips at the base of the nipple.  He would
scream when put into position but calm down when the nipple was put in his
mouth and stimulated his "sucking-spot".

After 18 hours of doing this (I came back the next morning) we started
alternating a few sucks from the bottle with a try of latching.  The mom (a
very patient and persistent woman) would feed the little boy until the
initial hunger was satisfied and then after every few sucks she would try to
latch him - still in the football hold which I find works well with large
soft breasts because the baby's chest supports the breast.

I showed her how to use Jack Newman's lacation supplementer made out a
feeding bottle with a #5 feeding tube stuck through the cut-off nipple.  The
feeding tube could be used on the mom's finger to give the calming-down
sucks between trials of latching and then could be threaded into the corner
of the baby's mouth when he latched to provide him with an almost immediate
reward for latching - without waiting for the let-down.  The mom also used
breast-compression to stimulate let-down so the bottle-habituated baby would
not get impatient waiting for the milk to come.

The mom worked on this for a couple of days and by day three the baby was
going to the breast quite reliably - after some initial fussing.  The dad
(who thought this was a lot of trouble to go to but was humouring the mom)
also fed the baby with the feeding tube on his finger in the middle of the
night when the mom was exhausted.  I thinks the slowness of the flow of milk
through the tube helped the baby to learn to be more patient waiting for the
let-down.

By a week the baby was exclusively breast-fed.

The factors that helped this all to work were, of course, the mom's
incredible patience and determination, but also putting the baby in the
breastfeeding position to feed him by bottle.  It is awkward, but I think it
works.

Thank you all for the amazing amount of information that you all share on
Lactnet.  I feel I lean something new everyday!

Eva Rebecca Bild CD(DONA), CBE, BC
Mothering Touch Doula Services
Victoria, BC

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