Thursday, March 13, 2008
Skin to skin
Hospitals these days really push the swaddling thing. They bring the baby burrito to you after every check and they show you how to do it so you can master your own little bundle at home. I think it makes a lot of sense in the hospital, especially if there's any separation from mom. Baby is looked at, vitals checked, dipe changed & now baby is pissed! So, put baby back in the burrito and he calms down on the way back to the room. So a new mom is like, "yes, I must master the baby burrito!" But at home, when working hard to get baby fed and the milk supply established, nothin works as well as skin to skin contact. Don't be afraid to set baby free and bring him close to cuddle and in his own time, he will cozy up and latch. As my favorite LC says, "Skin to skin is like control, alt, delete to a baby." It really does bring them back to basics, reminds them of their most recent home and helps them settle down and eat. And if nursing problems develop or the supply seems to drop, baby can be brought right back to the beginning, with only a diaper (or not if you EC), on mama's bosom.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
This is a place just to stop and appreciate all that breastfeeding offers both mother and baby. I've been nursing for 8 straight years. (Please, make it stop!!)
In the meantime, I will try and enjoy these close and CUTE moments and share a few things I've learned about fitting breastfeeding into even the busiest lifestyles.
Nursing to Sleep
I get asked this a lot in my volunteer LC life, "Is it wrong to let my baby to nurse to sleep?" Or, "My baby will only fall asleep with a boob in her mouth, is this bad?"
Last night I took a phone call from a mom who had an 8 mo old boy and had been "sleep training" him for 2 weeks. She was told by a doctor (rarely do they have more than 2 pages worth of breastfeeding info in their textbooks, I checked!) that no way was her baby hungry anymore at night. So, she took the baby out of her bed were she has been feeding him at night for the last 8 months and put him in his own bed in his room and won't feed him no matter how much he cries. The problem is that she has started back to work and her supply is diminishing. I gave her many options that would help her build her supply and never did I make her feel bad about her choice to night wean. But...one of the the very best ways to build supply is to nurse lying next to the baby, even if baby is then moved to their own bed, the actual drifting off of the mom as she nurses the baby to sleep sends the make-more-milk signal like nothing else. Its ancient, its common in every breastfeeding culture and its normal.
She is going to try power pumping to build her supply, where she will pump every hour all day and once at night. All of this because of the cultural pressure to get a baby to be independent so young. Many working moms find that nursing baby more often at night (usually in bed b/c of convenience--but it doesn't have to be in bed) helps them need to pump less. What would an independent 8 month old do anyway? Change his own diaper? No other mammal is so concerned with ignoring or separating from infants at night. and in the mammal world, only a few cultures are preoccupied with getting baby to sleep alone.
(When I say alone, I mean, with nobody coming when they cry, plenty of great mamas including my own, have baby in another room--but come when baby needs mama.)
Eventually they all do learn to fall asleep on their own. They do grow up and when babyhood is over, its gone forever, so why rush it? Its counter to healthy development to force things before the child is ready. For example, object permanence doesn't happen for most babies in the first year. When something is gone, a toy, a parent, they don't know if they are ever coming back. Even if the parent came back before, they might not trust it will ever happen again. Its one thing in the daytime, where there might be other caregivers to distract and devote attention to the baby, but at night it could be terrifying for a baby to think that no one is coming. So they cry, their only alarm method, and still if noone comes, they give up.
I was looking at a parenting board where somebody asked this question today about nursing to sleep, and all of the answers were so supportive, but I liked this one the most, "It's mostly frowned upon because it's the easy and natural way and therefore it can't be right. Parenting has to be hard you know. Also because they get used to it and if you didn't want to one night or you had to be away there'd be fussing and fighting sleep instead of peaceful bedtime...but that's what it would be like every night while you "broke the habit" anyway so I don't get that logic. It's fine to nurse to sleep as long as you and your child want to."
It is easy and it is natural and it makes my life easier to read a story to 2 kids as I feed another one until he passes out. Then the other 2 get up and get into their beds and put themselves to sleep. The baby stays close so that neither of us have to ever wake up fully. Bedtime drama is one thing we've been lucky to avoid, it is peaceful at night and something we all look forward to. (Not that the middle of the night isn't sometimes very hard.) When they are teenagers I'll wish I had it so good.
and I like being able to talk about it here, because I wouldn't say all of this to the mom on the phone.
Last night I took a phone call from a mom who had an 8 mo old boy and had been "sleep training" him for 2 weeks. She was told by a doctor (rarely do they have more than 2 pages worth of breastfeeding info in their textbooks, I checked!) that no way was her baby hungry anymore at night. So, she took the baby out of her bed were she has been feeding him at night for the last 8 months and put him in his own bed in his room and won't feed him no matter how much he cries. The problem is that she has started back to work and her supply is diminishing. I gave her many options that would help her build her supply and never did I make her feel bad about her choice to night wean. But...one of the the very best ways to build supply is to nurse lying next to the baby, even if baby is then moved to their own bed, the actual drifting off of the mom as she nurses the baby to sleep sends the make-more-milk signal like nothing else. Its ancient, its common in every breastfeeding culture and its normal.
She is going to try power pumping to build her supply, where she will pump every hour all day and once at night. All of this because of the cultural pressure to get a baby to be independent so young. Many working moms find that nursing baby more often at night (usually in bed b/c of convenience--but it doesn't have to be in bed) helps them need to pump less. What would an independent 8 month old do anyway? Change his own diaper? No other mammal is so concerned with ignoring or separating from infants at night. and in the mammal world, only a few cultures are preoccupied with getting baby to sleep alone.
(When I say alone, I mean, with nobody coming when they cry, plenty of great mamas including my own, have baby in another room--but come when baby needs mama.)
Eventually they all do learn to fall asleep on their own. They do grow up and when babyhood is over, its gone forever, so why rush it? Its counter to healthy development to force things before the child is ready. For example, object permanence doesn't happen for most babies in the first year. When something is gone, a toy, a parent, they don't know if they are ever coming back. Even if the parent came back before, they might not trust it will ever happen again. Its one thing in the daytime, where there might be other caregivers to distract and devote attention to the baby, but at night it could be terrifying for a baby to think that no one is coming. So they cry, their only alarm method, and still if noone comes, they give up.
I was looking at a parenting board where somebody asked this question today about nursing to sleep, and all of the answers were so supportive, but I liked this one the most, "It's mostly frowned upon because it's the easy and natural way and therefore it can't be right. Parenting has to be hard you know. Also because they get used to it and if you didn't want to one night or you had to be away there'd be fussing and fighting sleep instead of peaceful bedtime...but that's what it would be like every night while you "broke the habit" anyway so I don't get that logic. It's fine to nurse to sleep as long as you and your child want to."
It is easy and it is natural and it makes my life easier to read a story to 2 kids as I feed another one until he passes out. Then the other 2 get up and get into their beds and put themselves to sleep. The baby stays close so that neither of us have to ever wake up fully. Bedtime drama is one thing we've been lucky to avoid, it is peaceful at night and something we all look forward to. (Not that the middle of the night isn't sometimes very hard.) When they are teenagers I'll wish I had it so good.
and I like being able to talk about it here, because I wouldn't say all of this to the mom on the phone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
