When a baby is having difficulty staying interested in the breast and is getting sleepy. It often means that the baby isn’t able to stimulate the breast enough to maintain your supply. In these cases it is very important to pump or express to maintain the supply until such a time that the baby has matured enough to do the job herself.
Usually we suggest feeding that baby and doing
Breast Compression and
Switch Nursing. This will allow your baby to get as much milk as possible in the feed. Then pump or express after the feed. Keep expressing until two minutes after the milk has stopped flowing. But remember that it is better to do lots of short pumpings rather than one long one. (Pumping six times for ten minutes is much better than one pumping for an hour.)
Dr. Jack Newman also explains how to do Breast Compression on his web site,
http://www.drjacknewman.com/ Breast Compression at
http://www.breastfeedingonline.com/15pdf.pdf
He also has video clips on his web site which can be useful
Go to
http://www.breastfeedingonline.com/newman.shtml
and click on
Second Latch,
Compression and
Compression Two
and show the Breast Compression technique.
(scroll down the page - everythingis in alphabetical order.)
Another good technique is
Switch Nursing. Switch nursing is changing to the other side when the baby no longer seems interested. Usually when we start feeding the baby is very interested to suck, as the baby slows down we start the breast compression and when the baby slows down with the breast compression we change and get the baby to have the other side. On the other side after the baby starts to slow down we again use the breast compression and when he slows down again swap back to the first side again. We can continue swapping sides as much as we like and for as long as the baby is willing to continue to suck. It is fine to swap sides 8, 9 or 10 times in one feed.
All this information is difficult to take in and talking to someone or better a face-to-face meeting will help.
Even though your baby is managing to breastfeed a little you may also find the following links helpful.
Breastfeeding your Premature Infant http://www.kellymom.com/bf/preemie/index.html Establishing and maintaining milk supply when baby is not nursing http://www.kellymom.com/bf/supply/ma...pply-pump.html I'm not pumping enough milk. What can I do? http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/p..._decrease.html
especially the section
How can I increase pumping output?
Best wishes,
SARAH