Hi,
I've been lurking here for a few days and learning a lot. I would appreciate any tips or ideas for me to help my four-week-old. Nursing has been a challlenge from day 1 for many reasons. The past couple of days she has adopted the newest odd and very frustrating habit of, at various times during a feeding (can be at the beginning, in the middle, or even after she's gotten a full meal on one side and I'm offering the second since she seems hungry still), she will pull off for some reason---whether coughing/choking (I have oversupply) or getting impatient for letdown, and when I go to put her back on, she sticks out the tip of her tongue, not opening her mouth any further. Obviously I can't feed her like this, and she gets increasingly wound up and cries until I put her on my chest to calm her. A couple minutes later she'll start bobbing and fidgeting and I'll turn her sideways to put her back in position, and before she's even there she's started crying again.
One night last week we had an awful session where she did this for the first time, and I was up for two hours trying to get her to eat (attempting to feed, calming her down, putting her back on for another attempt, etc.) but I hadn't seen it again until two days ago. Since then it's been present at pretty much every feeding. All morning I could only get five-minute snacks into her, and no matter how much she displayed signs of hunger (rooting, trying to latch onto my arm when I carried her to the changing table), she would go back to doing this tongue thing and refusing to latch, getting increasingly frantic and frustrated. The afternoons have been better but this evening it's back in full force: she got 5 minutes of strong sucking and then refused to open her mouth again.
Thankfully I know she's getting something, because the side I nurse on feels much softer even after a terrible session like this, and wet diapers are prolific as usual (average nearly a dozen a day!). It's just sad and confusing when she's obviously still hungry but even as I turn her to try again after comforting her, she gets distressed all over again. Sometimes she gives up and falls asleep after a few minutes of this. When that happens, as long as she got at least a few minutes of real sucking/swallowing in, I'll just hold her while she sleeps or or put her down and try again when she's awake (no more than an hour later).
This is really wearing on me. I'm just hoping it's a random phase that will be gone as soon as it came, but in the meantime, any ideas would be much appreciated.