My daughter was born 5 weeks premature and spent 5 days in the NICU, where several days of consecutive weight gains were a prerequisite for going home, so she’s been on bottles since day 1 to help minimize weight loss/get her gaining. Now she’s 4 weeks old and we’re still really struggling to breastfeed. The problem I run into is that as soon as I put her to the breast if the flow isn’t gushing she just falls asleep, until I put her down and then she screams because she’s hungry. We just went through this cycle over and over for an hour before I gave in and gave her a bottle, which she took no problem with her eyes wide open. No amount of tickling or diaper changes or breast compression seems to help and both lactation specialists I’ve seen have told me I’m doing everything right and keep trying it’ll just take time. One told me to stop pumping/cut back bottles, but her doctors are still so focused on weight gain that I worry if I do that it will spur more interventions, potentially land her back to the hospital if she stops gaining, and jeopardize my supply (which has been great so far), so I’m definitely not going to do that.

Looking for any tips on feeding drowsy babies. If we continue like this much longer I may switch to EPing, since trying to get her to take the breast has been an immense source of stress, but I have plenty of supply and she loves her bottles.