In honor of National Breastfeeding Week, I'm sharing some of my top non-technical tips as just a normal lay person who has nothing but actual experience in hopes that they will be helpful. As a brand-new momma, some of the very best advice I received was from friends, relatives, and chatboards - and some of the WORST advice I received was from nurses and lactation consultants.
Last year I was somewhat annoyed that this week even exists and was pretty sensitive towards my momma friends who did not breastfeed (a fed baby is a happy baby was and continues to be my belief). However, I also strongly believe in the number of benefits available to both mom and baby via breastfeeding, and am acutely aware of the many ways it affected and nurtured the personal relationship between my son and I. As time progressed, and especially as he nursed well into his second year, I became more passionate about advocating for nursing moms and babies and am excited to see the cultural shift beginning from initial disgust at feeding babies in public and nursing beyond a year. For being such a progressive country, we sure do have it backwards on some points and the general attitude towards breastfeeding is one of those points.
Stepping off my soapbox now. Read on - unless pictures of breastfed infants offends you in which case you're in the wrong place.
THE NURSE MIGHT BE WRONG
I'm going to go ahead and say it. Babies and moms are NOT a one-size-fits-all dynamic and what works best for some will not work at ALL for others. In the recovery room, my first postpartum nurse was having a terrible day or something and she was in a bad mood each time she came in the room. Shortly after being transferred in, I was feeding my brand-new baby with exactly zero self confidence. The nurse took one look and walked over and said, "You're holding him wrong. You need to hold him like this. It's the cross cradle. You need to hold your boob with your other hand." As a member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee, there is not much I could possible hold and I was confused as to why I would need to bolster up my tiny boobs since there was no issue with my baby reaching it. In the cross cradle hold, Cade would begin to get upset pretty quickly and his limbs would turn purple (which is not uncommon for newborns, but was extremely unsettling for this first-time mom). I asked the nurse about this behavior and she said, "It's fine. This is the best way to hold them. Keep practicing." She continued to critique his latch (which did need help, and I was grateful for) and the way I was holding him - but I decided since the nurse said it was so, it must be so.
Eventually, after several choking episodes, we figured out that I had an overactive letdown and needed to hold my baby more upright to help him handle the flow. We started nursing with him laying on my belly with his head up towards mine and his feet at my waist, slightly reclined, and this made a huge difference. He went from choking every time he nursed to almost never choking at all. Spend some time experimenting with different holds and positions and eventually you will find out exactly which one is best for YOU.
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| If that pout isn't the most perfect thing in the world I don't even know what is. |
THE LACTATION SPECIALIST MIGHT ALSO BE WRONG
Later, the lactation consultant came in. She didn't ask if I needed help - she simply walked in and said, "Hi honey. I saw your chart - you have PCOS, right?"
"Yes..." I replied.
"Okay. A lot of our PCOS moms have trouble producing and so you're going to want a pump. You need to pump for 12 minutes after every feed and that's usually enough to get your supply up to par." She sat down and gave me a spiel - multiple times throughout the day, actually - as to why a normal pump would not be sufficient for me and laid out the pricing for renting a hospital-grade pump. She would reference PCOS a few times too. Can I just say how UNHELPFUL it is to a brand-new mom to let you know right off the bat that it's probable she won't be able to nurse her baby? While it IS true that a lot of women with PCOS lack sufficient glandular tissue and CANNOT produce enough milk no matter how much they pump or how expensive their equipment is, it is ALSO TRUE that 1/3 of women with PCOS are overproducers and and another third produce at minimum adequately. Chances are, things were going to go in my favor so I see no reason for the scare tactics.
I do need to say that after two weeks of pumping for 12 minutes after every.single.feed, I was producing enough to nearly feed twins and began donating milk not long after that. I'm certain that the abundant supply was in thanks to pumping so much and so often, but at the time I was terrified to back off of the pump sessions as I thought it would tank my supply. Eventually, and after a lot of peptalks from my mom, I dropped on session per day. It didn't make my supply bottom out at all - but throughout the nearly 18 months we nursed, I continued to produce enough that I could feed my baby in the morning, pump enough in one session after that to last through a 4 hour absence, and then continue on through the day with some to spare.
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| SO MILK DRUNK RIGHT NOW. |
BABIES NURSE FOR MORE THAN HUNGER
Think about it. They go from having constant companionship and the assurance of living right next to a human heartbeat to a level of independence in almost no time. It stands to reason that on occasion, they need comfort, they need human contact. If you feel like a pacifier, it's because you might be. It's up to you whether or not you feel the need to curb that behavior.
For us, read on to the next point. My son woke up an average of 3-8 times per night for most of his first year of life and one of the only ways I could get even an hour or two stretch of sleep at night was to bring him back to bed and let him comfort nurse for a stretch. For me, it was a win. I had a fat baby who would be asleep and next to me, at which point I could also sleep. It was great.
One of the ways I could always tell he was teething (beyond the massive amounts of drool) is that he would nurse nonstop day and night. Some babies develop a nursing aversion during teething, others don't want to do ANYTHING else. I'm personally a little leery of giving babies tylenol and ibuprofen as often as they typically tend to hurt from teething (no judgement to anyone who does, I just didn't feel it was the right option for my specific baby) so comfort nursing it was.
As he got older, more mobile, and especially as he would have meltdowns in response to not being able to communicate something, nursing was the quickest fix to a bumped head, tumble, or meltdown. Just a few minutes to calm down, reconnect, and get back on with our day.
YOUR BABY MIGHT NOT TAKE A PACIFIER
My baby never loved his. He would take it, usually suck on it for a little bit, and spit it out. Between 3 and 4 months, he decided he was super done with it and never took it again. It would make him angry every time we tried - and I tried every brand of paci under the sun. He simply preferred the human contact associated with nursing - which made it difficult for my husband and others who took care of him when I went to work. That said, he was slow to develop other self-soothing measures and when he would wake up scared at night, he would want me.
THE DURATION IS UP TO YOU
In the US, it's somewhat rare for a baby to nurse past 6 months. It's rare to go past a year. Into toddlerhood, you're considered something of a pariah. However - nobody knows your child as well as YOU do - which is why it's up to you to set limits on how long and how often you're able, willing, and want to breastfeed. It's intensely personal and depends upon factors that nobody is as familiar with as you.
For us, my son would not (and still won't) drink cows milk. When teething, he went completely off solids from 9-12 months. And then post-first-birthday, he simply wasn't ready. So we nursed until he was 18 months, I was 12 weeks pregnant, and my milk dried up suddenly. I have no regrets at all - it worked very well for our family, saved us tons on formula, and helped forge a special bond that I'll always look back on very fondly.
ASK YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR FRIENDS
There's a pretty significant chance that they can save you time and money for similar advice that you'd pay for from a lactation specialist. In my mind, real life experience is every bit as valuable as a certification or degree and we don't put enough stock in what we can learn from those who have been there before us. So have no shame - if you have questions, check with your mom/best friend first!
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