Breast milk is the VERY BEST FOOD your baby can have during his first months of life. Companies have tried hard to create milk formulas that are as nutritious as breast milk, but even the best formulas are not as good as breast milk for your baby. PLEASE CHOOSE TO BREAST FEED if at all possible.
Only breast milk has PROTECTION against certain illnesses and diseases built in to it. It will help keep your new little baby safer from sickness during her first few months of life. Formula cannot offer this.
Breast fed babies are healthier and have less stomach problems (such as colic, constipation, and gas.)
At first, your breasts make a very rich milky substance called “colostrum.” This is very healthy for the baby to drink but is not as thick and rich as breast milk. It may take you several days for your breast milk to “come in.” When this occurs, you will notice a greater sense of fullness in your breasts and they may also begin to leak a little through your clothes when it is time to breast feed your baby, or if your baby cries. This is normal. It is also a good reason to have your baby on a feeding schedule.
Babies are not good at breast-feeding at first. So, you must be PATIENT with them and teach them how to be good at breastfeeding. Be sure the baby’s mouth is as wide open as possible so she can take as much of your nipple into her mouth as she can when nursing.
Babies who pinch their lips together tightly over the nipple will not suck or feed efficiently and will get a lot less milk. In addition, it will cause pain to the mother’s breasts. So help your baby open her mouth as wide as possible.
If your nipples are very sore, or if the baby doesn’t seem to be latching on correctly, one simple tool you can use is called a “nipple shield.” These can usually be found at Pharmacies or Baby stores. Place the plastic shield over your nipple and then let the baby nurse through the shield. This can really help a lot if pain is an issue. Once your nipples become more used to the nursing, you may stop using the shield.
Keep the baby’s head more upright so that her bottom is much lower in your lap than her head. Babies who feed lying flat (horizontally) tend to have more ear infections. So allow your baby’s head to be higher than her bottom when she feeds.
Be sure to drink PLENTY of water or fluids every day so you will make plenty of breast milk.
Emptying your breasts also stimulates them to make even more milk!
Obtain an electric breast pump. After your baby nurses every 2 hours, pump all the extra milk from your breasts and store the extra milk in the refrigerator. Breast milk lasts about 1 week in the refrigerator and 1 month in the freezer. You can use this extra breast milk to supplement your baby’s regular feedings or to allow others in the family (father or grandparents) to feed and bond with the baby. But if Mom is feeding the baby, it should be from her breasts if at all possible to avoid "nipple confusion." Bottle feedings should be done by someone other than Mom if possible.
Another way to stimulate increased breast milk production is to drink 2-3 cups of “Mother’s Milk Tea” which can be found at many grocery stores, Whole Foods, and health food stores. It is very safe and many mothers have found it to be useful in the early days of breastfeeding to increase the amount of breast milk so the baby can gain weight faster.
I'm concerned about what you mean when you recommending putting baby on a breastfeeding "schedule". Many or most babies will create their own routine, but will change it up frequently in the early months and may need to increase their nursing at any time due to growth spurts, illness, preparing to meet a new milestone, or an increased need for comfort. Some babies need to nurse every 60-90 minutes, especially early on, while others do well with 3 hours between feedings. Healthy babies are born with built-in regulators and know when they are hungry or full. We should respect their signals and teach them to respect their own signals and stop eating when they are full. Being confused about or not respecting our hunger and satiety cues has contributed to our problems with obesity in this country.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I have found it very useful to refer to the WHO growth charts for breastfed infants, since the CDC charts are based mostly on formula-fed infants, who have a different growth curve. Not only that, it is helpful to remember that each infant has their own unique metabolism, just like adults, and will probably gain according to their genetic make-up if allowed to regulate their own food intake (once they are gaining steady, especially if it was a sleepy baby who struggled to latch, like mine). The very nature of a growth curve means that some healthy babies will be near the bottom and others will be near the top, with the rest falling somewhere between the two ends. The goal is not to have a baby who gains a lot of weight quickly, but one who gains steadily rather than stagnating or losing, and who is healthy and thriving in all ways.
I'm posting this in chunks since there is a character limit!
ReplyDeleteAlso, with regard to pumping- it may or may not be the best idea to pump in the early weeks unless there is significant concern about low supply. It can be a helpful tool, but before 5-6 weeks or breastfeeding has been solidly established, it carries a higher risk of nipple confusion and unless Mom is pumping in addition to, rather than replacing feedings, her breast misses out on the much more effective stimulation of having baby nurse effectively. The pump is also a poor indicator of supply, since a baby is far more effective at removing milk than even the best pump, and many women respond poorly to the pump. Effective pumping is also a learned skill. In low supply situations, breastfeeding should always come first- nurse baby as frequently as he/she will accept it, take a "nursing vacation" and lounge in bed or around the house for several days if possible, keeping baby skin to skin and nursing with every peep. If still necessary, Mom can add power pumping in addition to, but not replacing, feeds with baby. Power pumping can be done in a variety of ways, but frequently involves pumping 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off for an hour, several times a day. This mimics the patterns of a young infant attempting to increase supply to meet a higher demand.
On the other hand, moms who actually have a normal to high supply who pump more than a tiny bit early on may develop problems with an oversupply. This can be very uncomfortable for mom and results in engorgement and excessive leaking long past the newborn period, and prevents baby from getting to the fatty hindmilk at every feeding. I had a natural oversupply but pumping even a little bit made it worse, and it took several weeks of no pumping and careful block feeding to regulate it. Pumping can be a good tool but should be used with awareness.
I would say the same about the nipple shield. It can be a great tool, but baby can become dependent on it just as with bottles, and become distressed about latching directly onto the nipple and need to be re-taught how to nurse directly. It can also sometimes mask the root cause of the pain or latching difficulty, so it should be used under the care of an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant if possible.
There are also several issues about which even many health care professionals are under-informed. Tongue tie and upper lip tie are frequently missed and lead to long-term pain and weight-gain problems. In our case, my son had a severe upper lip tie and a moderate tongue tie that were missed by all of the health care professionals involved in our care when he was a newborn, and my request to check for tongue tie or thrush because I was still having a lot of pain at 3 months in was dismissed by his pediatric PA with a wave. Now that I know a great deal more, I believe it's nothing short of miraculous that we even made it past 2 weeks at all, and were still hanging on by the skin of our teeth (literally, in my son's case...) through all the pain and frustration when we went in for laser division surgery at 19 months. Most of his latch problems have now resolved, and his problems with gagging and vomiting at meal times have also resolved along with his difficulty producing consonant sounds in speech.
ReplyDeleteThrush is also under-diagnosed and under-treated, and if one member of the nursing dyad is showing symptoms, both should be treated to prevent passing it back and forth. Nursing pairs who have repeated or persistent thrush infections might have other imbalances in their system that make them vulnerable and might benefit from cutting out white flours and all sugar to fight the infection.
Last but not least, I believe we are overriding a baby's natural ability to latch onto the breast by over-managing the latching process. Medications during labor and high-intervention births don't always but can inhibit a baby's latching instincts, but then we go on to touch the back of baby's head which activates a reflex that causes them to rear their head back, follow all kinds of confusing rules for lining baby up correctly, tickle their lips with the nipple which causes them to make an "oooo" shape with their lips and try to slurp the nipple in rather than the desire "aaahhh" shape, and then mash as much of the breast as possible into their mouth when they finally open it wide to cry out of frustration. No wonder so many moms and babies give up in frustration. We're working against our natural instincts and reflexes rather than with them. Here's an absolutely brilliant piece on the topic that was linked by Best for Babes Foundation on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/notes/breastfeeders-connect/everything-old-is-new-again/197589503613556 Also, Biological Nurturing at www.biolgicalnurturing.com has fabulous information on working with your baby's natural instincts to achieve a comfortable latch. The best thing I did amidst all of our struggles with a sleepy baby, epic engorgement/oversupply, and undiagnosed tongue and lip tie, was to throw the boppy pillow across the room and lean back with my son draped across my chest/belly and let him take the lead, and only providing minimal guidance. It still wasn't a great latch given the anotomical difficulties, but he LATCHED without hours of screaming to achieve it.
I hope that my months of struggle, pain, and intensive research are helpful to you and your clients. So many health care professionals are uninformed or misinformed about various aspects of breastfeeding, and then fail to properly educate their clients. Some don't even care and their answer to every problem is to switch or supplement with formula. It's great to see someone posting encouragement for new mothers to breastfeed!
ReplyDeleteHere are some other great, informative resources on various breastfeeding topics:
www.llli.org (La Leche League's main website- many easy to understand articles as well as very active support forums)
www.kellymom.com (An extensive collection of articles and links to research and papers by professionals as well as illustrations and easy to digest help for trouble-shooting. It also has links to the WHO breastfed infant growth charts.)
www.bestforbabes.org (Breastfeeding support at the social/societal level and busting the "booby traps"!)
www.nbci.ca (Dr. Jack Newman's International Breastfeeding Clinic, with great information and video clips on latching in multiple languages. Also he has great information on thrush diagnosis and treatment)
www.biologicalnurturing.com
www.kiddsteeth.com (Dr. Lawrence Kotlow, a pediatric dentist at the forefront of research on tongue and lip tie and laser division surgery, who has easy to understand information as well as published papers on his website.)
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ReplyDeletethanks, Miriam. I appreciate your comments. One response: the reason a feeding schedule is recommended, especially for newborn babies, is to help them regulate their hunger and also to help them regain their birth weight more quickly in the first two weeks of life. Some babies would rather sleep than eat at first, and this can lead to abnormal electrolytes in the first couple of weeks and dehydration which can lead to kidney issues. So, getting them on at least an every two hour, (but not more than 4 hr) feeding schedule is beneficial. Later on the babies will regulate their hunger more efficiently and will refuse breast or bottle if they are not hungry.
ReplyDeletethanks for following!