Feeding
All babies tend to lose up to 10% of their birth weight in the first few days and it may take your baby longer to regain this weight and put on more weight. Your Health Visitor will help you to monitor this and you can plot your baby’s weight gain on the Down’s syndrome growth chart in your personal child health record.
Your baby may have low muscle tone and may find it more difficult to latch onto the breast or bottle teat correctly and to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing. In addition, being able to maintain a seal on the breast or bottle teat can be harder for your baby. Keeping some gentle upward pressure on their chin may help.
Although some babies wake up and clearly show that they are hungry, some babies are very sleepy and need to be gently woken so that they can feed. Making a soft noise or rubbingyour baby’s hands and feet, can help to rouse your baby ready for a feed.
As your baby has to make more effort to feed, or is too sleepy, you may find that they tire quickly before they have had enough milk. Burping and continual gentle stimulation can help them to stay awake for longer whilst feeding and help to ensure that they are getting enough nutrition. Changing breasts several times may help and there are a variety of feeding positions which may make feeding easier and more comfortable for you both.
Simpsons Maternity Pavilion have a website showing different positions: http://www.show.scot.nhs.uk/BabyLed/index.html
Breast milk is understood to have very beneficial properties for a babies development and many babies with Down’s syndrome can successfully learn how to breastfeed. Other babies partly breastfeed and supplement this with expressed milk or formula. Babies fed through gastronasal tubes can also be given expressed breast milk.
