Hellobee Boards

When my baby was screaming too much I found my best bet was to get her to sleep and lay her next to my bare chest. She would stir and I would immediately help her latch on so she was basically still asleep. To calm the screaming our best bet was usually the five S's (try you tube and search for Dr. Harvey Karp if you're not familiar.) E would have her swaddled and bounce her in the bathroom with either the shower or the hair dryer going for white noise.

Good luck and big hugs to you!

Have your baby checked for tongue tie. My first was fine for the first 4/5 weeks, and then screamed her head off, arched and kicked and fought nursing, until we had her posterior tongue tie and upper lip tie corrected at 6 months old. She was diagnosed over and over with reflux, and put on meds, but the ties were missed by 3 doctors and an LC. You can look at my previous posts on here, or Google Dr. Ghaheri (ENT) or Dr. Kotlow (dentist) for TONS of info. It's common, and often missed. Just a thought since what you're describing sounds very similar to my experience.

We used white noise to calm LO down enough to latch.

I'm sorry you are going through this. It happened to us two weeks back and I ended up crying every time my baby boy cried. My breasts were engorged which is why he couldn't latch on. I started using heating pad on my breasts before every feeding. If he still had a problem latching on i pumped for 5 minutes and then fed him. It was a really long dance before every feeding but it worked. Once the engorgement went away he was back to nursing normally.

Soooo much easier said than done, but I would also recommend stripping him down and tickling him so that he stays awake when you do finally get him to latch. He's probably exhausted from all of the screaming! Our LO used to do this too!

@Kbee: I don't know if someone else had mentioned this, but when my little one was doing this I started off with a bottle and did the switcher-roo on him. It was enough to get him past that I'm starving mode. I also found that the shields helped too

I second napping beside him or with him in your lap (with your boobs out :)) so he can latch on when he needs to. My LO often gets frustrated if there's no boob there for him as he rouses.