Breastfeeding a wriggly baby

I'm very excited to announce that at 5 months I've been able to stop expressing and establish (relatively) pain-free feeding! Hooray!

I have a question though. DS is extremely wriggly through feeding and I have heaps of scratch marks on my chest. He also pinches with his fingers and tugs with his head. I know I need to not feed him wrapped so that he learns to use his hands, but it's getting tempting! I've tried giving him other things to hold but he'd much prefer to scratch me!

He's restless the whole feed (usually 10-20 mins in total - is that normal at 5 months?). However he seems satisfied enough and actually cries less than when we were bottlefeeding.

What can I try to stop being a scratching post?

First of all well done on being able to feed your bub again...high 5!
Have you tried feeding him lying down in bed? My DS used to be king wriggle/fidget and I found this was a great way of getting him to settle down.
If you both lie on your side facing each other then one of your DS's arms is sort of stuck between the mattress and his body and then you can cuddle him while you feed so he dosen't wave his free arm around so much. If that makes sense?

Congratulations and well done! :clap:
From that age and for quite a while after DS would only feed in a quiet darkened room - you may find reduced distraction helps.
Also, some mums find a necklace or something like that to attract their attention while feeding can really help save their skin.
I found at this age DS was feeding very quickly compared to earlier, but there is a wide variation in normal of course - if that's how long he wants to feed, then that's fine.

Thanks so much ladies... will give both of your suggestions a go!

Meanwhile... If you see a woman around town whose neck/decollete looks as though she's been rolling around in a thorny rose bush, it's probably me! :)

yay :dance: for the pain free feeding, another thing I use to do was hold his hand but as PP have suggested necklaces work well too