Why “the perfect latch”?

When I started ou breastfeeding baby B, six months ago at the time of writing, I really struggled with his latch. No amount of reading web sites or books or even talking over the phone to breastfeeding counselors could help me. He would fall asleep almost immediately on the breast and yet if I took him off, he’d scream and scream. He had a poor latch but I couldn’t change it by myself. I drove myself to despair trying to find “the perfect latch”. With some help from my friend K, lots of online and telephone support from a number of people, and a superduper midwife, N, I managed to fix his latch.

In the end it had really been a simple matter of positioning. And unrealistic expectations (even since his latch was “fixed” he still is quite a “high needs” baby), and the belief (contributed to by a breastfeeding manual actually) that a baby will always come off the breast by himself when he has had enough.

So that’s why this is called “the perfect latch”; lots of Mums are searching for this in order to have a great breastfeeding adventure.