4 days old, still not nursing... pumping questions

jebek320

I will preface this post by saying that I am a nervous new mom and feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. My little guy is 4 days old and still not nursing.  At the hospital, it was so hard to get him awake enough to be interested.  I had a lot of help from the nurses and lactation consultant, but we still haven't been able to get him going.  I've been pumping colostrum and feeding it to him with a syringe.  Today he is finally starting to be more interested in eating in general, although we're still having to wake him for almost every feeding.  We saw the pediatrician today and he's lost 9% of his birth weight, so we are playing catch up.  She recommended making sure he is getting at least 15 cc's every 2 1/2 to 3 hours, and offer more if he'll take it, which we've hit all day today.  I have a ton of questions!

 1. My milk has starting coming in today.  The consistency is changing, but its still yellow... is that normal? Is it still partly colostrum? I'm clueless

2. At my last pump I got 50 cc's, which I know is more than he's going to need to take... I know the consistency of breast milk changes, so should I still keep it and start building a reserve?

3. Now that we're dealing with more volume, feeding with the syringe is getting a little exhausting (but I have no problem continuing to do that if that's what he needs).  I think he would probably do a lot better with a bottle, but I've been hesitating to offer an artificial nipple until I can see if we can get nursing going. What do you think?

4.  I keep bringing him to the breast every time before I pump and he is starting to make more attempts, but has never really latched.  This hasn't been in sync with his eating times, so I'm wondering if I should maybe start pumping every 2 1/2-3 hours at the time he would feed? 

5.  I wonder how likely it will be that he will learn to nurse.  I'm preparing myself to EP if that's what it takes. Any advice?

 TIA!!!