how offensive

A friend sent me this fabulous link from Nature’s Mother showing how offensive it is to breastfeed in public. Enjoy!

early-onset nipple pain

Happy two-week birthday to my second son! I’ve taken to calling him Segundo, after the musician Compay Segundo, naturally. He’s breastfeeding like a champ, but it took me a week or so to remember how to breastfeed a newborn. I stopped breastfeeding my older son this April, when he was 19 months old, and turns out there’s just a tiny difference between the two.

Early onset nipple pain is typically a result of improper latch or positioning. As with anything else, prevention is the best treatment, but many women don’t even realize they’re doing anything wrong until the pain has already set in. Including myself! So in honor of Segundo, here’s a link to Dr. Jack Newman’s handout on sore nipples, with excellent tips and advice on alleviating the pain and correcting the source of the problem.

Happy holidays and happy nursing!

breastfeeding fun facts

Today’s fun facts come from Anne Smith’s excellent website Breastfeeding Basics.

1. Breastmilk is living tissue that changes to meet your baby’s nutritional needs, and to protect him against disease.  The fat content of human milk varies month to month, day to day, and even hour to hour.  For example, the milk produced for a premature infant is higher in protein and calories than milk produced for a full-term infant, giving the tiny baby what he needs to catch up on growth.  In cold climates, human milk contains more fat — in warm climates, more water.  If your baby is very hungry, he nurses more vigorously and receives more fatty hind milk.  If he is just thirsty, he feeds more leisurely and receives a lower calorie milk.  As he gets older, the fat content of the milk will gradually decrease because his growth will slow, and he will need fewer calories per pound of weight.

2. Breastfed babies score an average of 8 points higher on IQ tests than formula-fed babies, and this seems to hold true even when things like parent’s educational and socio-economic backgrounds are factored in.

3. Breastfeeding suppresses ovulation and delays the return of fertility.  In mothers who exclusively breastfeed (no bottles, unrestricted nursing day and night, and no solids before six months), breastfeeding is about 95% – 98% effective as a birth control method.

4. The hormone prolactin that is released when you nurse is called “the mothering hormone,” and helps you relax. When researchers feed it to laboratory mice, (even males), they start building nests and doing motherly things. It really is a powerful hormone, and many mothers report that even when they are extremely stressed, they feel a rush of relaxation when their milk lets down.

5. Breastmilk contains antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and antprotozoal factors as well as antibodies to many specific disease organisms.  Breastfed babies have a lower incidence of infection, anemia, diarrhea, meningitis, diabetes, gastroenteritis, asthma, constipation, allergies, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, dental and speech problems, childhood cancer, pulmonary disease, cataracts, high cholesterol, and many more. Artificially fed babies are three to four times as likely as bottle-fed infants to suffer from ear infections and lower respiratory infections, and sixteen times more likely to be sick during the first two months of life.

down with babywise

The Babywise philosophy is bad for breastfeeding.  This is a fact.  Babies need to be fed when they present hunger signs, before they start crying, as often as they want.

Here’s a fantastic article by Lisa Marasco and Jan Barger about cue-feeding of breastfed infants, with specific references to where medical fact departs from Babywise philosophy.

The article is incredibly informative, but it’s long, so I’ll share with you a fun fact I learned.  Marasco and Barger state that

if a baby contracts an illness that mom has not been exposed to previously, he will transfer this organism through his saliva to the breast, where antibodies are manufactured on site and then sent back to baby via the milk to help him cope. Science does not come even close to duplicating this feat! Babies who are sick will often increase their nursing frequency, and researchers now believe that they do so not only for the comfort that it brings to a miserable little being, but also to increase the baby’s intake of antibodies and immune factors available through mother’s breast (Dettwyler, website). Babies seem to “know” when they have been exposed to a virus or bacteria, and know when they need to breastfeed more frequently to help them fight it off; most importantly, they sense it before parents realize that an illness is developing. There is no system in existence that is as sensitive and accurate as this one, and it is not under parental control.

the irs fails

An article in The New York Times reports that the IRS “has ruled that breast-feeding does not have enough health benefits to qualify as a form of medical care,” and therefore breast pumps and other breastfeeding supplies do not qualify for tax-sheltered health care accounts.  “I.R.S. officials say they consider breast milk a food that can promote good health, the same way that eating citrus fruit can prevent scurvy.”

You can sign a petition at MomsRising.org to urge the IRS to reverse this unfortunate decision.

babies

I finally saw the documentary film Babies, and it is exactly as charming as I expected — neither more nor less.  It is quite literally an hour and a half of babies doing all the things that babies do, and that’s it.  But best of all, there’s loads of breastfeeding!  Check it out.

mastitis treatment

I’ve been reading up on mastitis because, thankfully, I don’t have any firsthand experience with it, but I need to know how to treat it.  Here’s the basic recommendation:

1. Heat
2. Rest
3. Massage
4. Empty the breast

1. Heat — either wet or dry, whichever feels better to you — can help, particularly right before nursing.  Use a warm compress, lean over a basin of hot water, or take a hot shower.

2. Rest!  Treat yourself as though you have the flu, because your body essentially thinks it does.  Consider mastitis your body’s way of telling you to slow down.  Increase fluids, and get someone to help you around the house, if possible.

3. Nurse your baby on the affected side first, while massaging the breast toward the nipple.  Massage often during and between feedings to help loosen the plugged area.  Massage in combination with heat — in the basin of water or the hot shower — is particularly effective.

4. Get in bed and nurse, nurse, nurse.  It is imperative that you nurse as often as possible.  Let me repeat: do not stop nursing during mastitis.  Even if you have an infection, the infection is in the breast tissue, not the milk, and you should keep nursing.

Kellymom has some great guidelines for identifying if you have plugged ducts or full-blown mastitis.  If you think you have mastitis, call your doctor, because if the symptoms don’t clear up using the above methods within 12 to 24 hours, you should be on antibiotics.

the breast crawl

I’ve been reading Karin Cadwell and Cindy Turner-Maffei’s fabulous book Continuity of Care in Breastfeeding: Best Practices in the Maternity Setting.  Here’s a little of what I’ve learned:

Because our system sees the newborn as a pediatric patient and the mother as an obstetric patient, the urge is to care for them separately and reunite them when both are deemed stable.  Nothing could be further from the biologic imperative.  In order for baby and mother to recover from the birth and stabilize, they should do so as a unit. … When allowed to lie skin to skin with their mothers for the first hour or 2 after birth, newborn babies can find the breast and initiate suckling without any help from their mothers.

This is known as the breast crawl.  They quote this excerpt from Marshall and Phyllis Klaus:

There is something special about the first hour of life. Parents have waited many months to see their baby and surprisingly when the baby is born, he or she is in a special state of alertness — called State Four, the quiet state of consciousness, ready to meet its parents, and is especially interested in the mother’s and father’s face.

In this special state, the baby’s eyes are wide open, the baby is quiet. The baby has heard and remembers the mother’s voice from uterine life and will distinguish her voice from other women’s voices, and 80% of babies remember the father’s voice. The baby is warmed by the mother’s chest and soothed by the mother’s touch. This quiet time together helps the transition from uterine life to the outside world.

This special state in the infant lasts for 30 to 45 minutes or longer. All sorts of exchanges between the mother and infant are going on. The baby is taking in the mother through many senses as is the mother learning about her baby. The baby is becoming familiar with the mother’s smell and within a few days will pick out his or her mother’s breast pad from other women’s breast pads. This is related to the particular smell of one’s own mother not her milk.

As the baby gazes in the mother’s face he is recording a memory of her face so that if he is tested with a picture of his mother’s face and other women’s faces four hours later, he will choose his mother’s face over and over again.

The mother is taking in her baby also, by touch, smell, as well as sight. Curiously, if she is tested a few hours later to pick out her baby from two others, she will know her baby by touch and smell within one day.

Read more about the breast crawl here.

choice

I have a hard time with moms who choose to formula feed.

Websites like this and this make me want to scream.

Every time there’s a story in the news about breastfeeding, there’s an uproar from moms who tried but were unable to breastfeed and are sick and tired of being made to feel guilty.  I’m not talking about those women.  My heart breaks for those women who tried until they were bleeding and wrecked, but, in many cases because they weren’t getting the help they needed, they were not able to be successful, and I hate that they are down on themselves for it.  (I get frustrated when those women become upset any time breastfeeding is featured in a positive light, as though they are being personally attacked, but I know they tried and struggled and some are still grappling with that.)

In fact, the whole issue of making moms feel “guilty” is missing the point.  We shouldn’t make anyone feel guilty, because we all love our kids, and we’re just trying to do our best.  Moms carry too much guilt about raising their kids as it is.  We shouldn’t even really be talking about the “benefits” of breastfeeding, as though there are different options and some are just better than others.  As though there are disadvantages.  If all women had access to the overwhelming amount of evidence-based information about breastfeeding and had proper support and resources to help them overcome any hurdles they encounter, we wouldn’t be having this discussion about guilt.   There would simply be no question.  It would be a non-issue.

What we’re dealing with is institutional and cultural and market-driven bias against breastfeeding in favor of formula.  But honestly — who cares?  It doesn’t matter what your friend did or your mom did or what the Enfamil commercial tells you — you have to do what’s right for your baby.

I spoke with a mom today who is going to formula feed.  She’s already decided.  She says she doesn’t have time to breastfeed because she’ll be working full time, and I talked about how breastfeeding actually takes less time than sterilizing and cleaning bottles and mixing formula, and how she could consider pumping at work, or, if she can’t do that, then at least breastfeeding the baby while they’re at home together, and only using formula while she’s away.

She said, “I’m really not interested.”

Not interested?  That’s what I told the telemarketer trying to get me to join the Allstate Motorclub for $1.99 a month.

We’re talking about feeding, and caring for, and bonding with your baby.  We’re talking about preventing disease, in the mother and the baby.  We’re talking about saving $1,200 to $2,500 a year.  We’re talking about 101 other reasons to breastfeed.

And yes, sure, plenty of babies — millions of babies — were raised on formula and turned out just fine.  Others, however, contracted meningitis from contaminated infant formula; many died and those that survived suffered brain damage.  We’re also talking about unethical corporations preying on developing nations and causing the deaths of millions of babies.

I just don’t get it.  If you can explain it to me — civilly and respectfully, of course — please do.

breastfeeding and ppd

Unfortunately, postpartum depression may be the ONE ailment that breastfeeding does not prevent.  More research is needed on the link between depression and breastfeeding (does depression cause weaning or does weaning cause depression?), but the research so far seems to indicate that moms who are successfully breastfeeding are less likely to be depressed than those who are not.