Latch Problems

ccleary1313

Hi everyone!

 I just gave birth to my second son September 28th. With my first son, I only breastfed for 1 month and struggled due to a really tough recovery. I'm really determined this time to BF for as long as possible. We seem to be having a few issues with our latch this time around that have been so frustrating!

 I used a midwife for this birth, and have received awesome post partem care. I had lots of help with fixing our latch initially, and it seems while the midwife is here we get it and everything is fine for the rest of the day and I feel super confident, but then a few days later it's back to before. This time I'm not due to see the midwife again until next week, so I thought I'd post here in the meantime.

I know what a good latch looks like, it's just getting it that seems to be such a struggle. At first, right after birth, Baby would grab only the nipple. I became very heavily engorged and it was difficult to get him to latch on at all. It would take 15+ mins to get him to latch and then it would still only be on the nipple. I ended up with really sore nipples. I found a method on Dr Jack Newman's site about how to massage around the nipple to "push" the milk ducts back a little so baby could get more then just the nipple. This made it easier for him to latch on (ie, it didn't take as long) but it still hurt and my nipples definitely didn't get any better. Once I wasn't as engorged, we were able to get our midwife to help us get a better latch by getting baby to open his mouth wider. I bring him to my breast, instead of bringing my breast to him, push him at the base of his skull to make his head fall back and open his mouth wider, and keep him hugged tight so his chin stays on me and his nose pushed away and not touching me. He is definitely getting lots of milk, and is growing and gaining, but it seems to only be a good latch half the time. I know it's his lower lip that isn't tucked out, but I can't (and don't have enough hands!) to get him to fix it. I've been using the football hold mostly because it seems to be what we are both most comfortable doing.

 Does anyone have any tricks to getting a baby to keep that mouth open wide AND lower lip tucked out?