Pause

This blog is sleeping.......

Helping Moms Trust Their Instincts (And Hold Their Babies!)

Breastfeeding mothers tend to be more attached and attuned to their babies.  Nature intended it to be this way.  Humans are “carry” mammals, like marsupials and apes, and require constant contact and unrestricted access to the breast.

Gabrielle Palmer, author of The Politics of Breastfeeding, writes that we are so overwhelmed with bottle feeding imagery and are so used to the way bottle fed babies are treated that we feel we have to override our instincts.  This can happen when we hear advice about “spoiling” a baby and “crying it out,” not to mention questions about whether a baby is “sleeping through the night,” among the well-meaning-but-often-inappropriate comments given by people who bottle-fed their babies (and who are likely not fully informed themselves).

In case you haven’t heard, you can’t spoil a baby. In fact, letting a baby cry it out can be very harmful.  Babies wants are the same as their needs up until about the time they can stick things in their mouth that they are not supposed to have.  Newborns especially have just a few basic ones: they want to be fed from their mothers’ breasts, they want to be comfortable (clean and warm), and they want to feel safe.  Nowhere feels safer than skin-to-skin contact with the center of their universe-- their love, their world, their habitat: their mother.  Nowhere feels less safe to a baby than being out of human contact.  They literally have no idea if their mother is ever coming back.  Newborns are in a trust/mistrust mode:  if their needs are met, they learn to trust and become more independent children and adults.  If these needs are not met, they learn they can’t trust their parents.  Crying isn’t manipulation, it’s communication, and the reason it tears our heart out to hear a baby cry is because we are hardwired to respond.  If we don’t respond, babies go onto a despair/survival mode in order to conserve energy and protect themselves from marauding tigers.

This brings me back to my original point.  I have noticed that most mothers leave their babies in car seats the entire time they are in the clinic.  I have less of a problem when a baby is sleeping, but what about when the baby is crying?  Besides the health risks of car seats, how can we convince moms that jiggling the car seat is not what the child wants?  A formula feeding mother will most likely pop a bottle in the baby’s mouth (many issues here) but even the breastfeeding mother is often reluctant to hold her own baby even –or especially- when he cries.  How do we affirm and inform?

Here is my latest strategy:  If I am talking to a mom, and her baby starts to wake up and fuss in the car seat, as soon as she starts to jiggle with no intent to pick up I say, “You don’t have to keep her in there because of me!  Go ahead and pick her up!”  Mom picks her up, and I will comment on how much happier baby is with mother, or how the mother is her baby’s favorite person, or something else positive.  This has worked well so far, and mom will often comment that she doesn’t want to “spoil” her baby.  What better opening could I have for a little “you can’t spoil your baby” education?  So far, the mothers I have talked to have felt happy and relieved when I pass along this information.  First time mothers especially, which are the ones I see most often, can always use extra encouragement, especially at the beginning.  Telling them that the science supports their instincts will help them keep their baby happy, support their breastfeeding relationship, and pave the way for any future children they may have.  Secondary strategy:  Super-glue the car seat to the inside of the car.

Facebook: A Breastfeeding Resource?

I am definitely not one of those people big into the social networking phenomenon.  Despite that fact, I tend to visit Facebook once or twice a day.  Why? Because it turns out it’s a useful resource to find recent articles and news stories related to breastfeeding.  While I am not advocating Facebook as the only place to get your information, there are some useful and reputable breastfeeding resources who share information via Facebook.  Check out the following links: ideally, if you are logged onto your Facebok account, this will take you to their Facebook page where you can “like” them if you are so inclined:


Breastfeeding Resources:
KellyMom
Infant Risk Center
IBLCE
USLCA
baby gooroo
UC Davis Human Lactation Center
HMBANA
Australian Breastfeeding Association
Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine
Mothering Multiples
Breastfeeding in Combat Boots
Hale Publishing


Babywearing:
Babywearing International
Babywearing Safety


Blogs:
Blacktating
Peaceful Parenting
The Curious Lactivist


Other Facebook Pages You May Find Interesting:
Breastfeeding
The Breast Idea
Ask Dr. Sears
Heather Cushman-Dowdee
RISCS- Resolving Sleep Controversies Safely
If breastfeeding offends you, put a blanket over YOUR head!
Mothering Magazine
Historic Photos & Prints of Breastfeeding


Once again, bear in mind that these are not links to webpages but to Facebook pages.  Some of these pages are more likely to post links to breastfeeding in the news, some are more chatty, some are more active than others.  Take a look at each page and decide for yourself if it is something you want to "like."  There are thousands of more pages out there; hopefully I have given you a good place to start.

The Zen of Pump Cleaning

As a peer, there are amazing aspects of my job, and there are slightly less enjoyable ones, like cleaning pumps.  Obviously, making our pumps bright and shiny after each mom brings them back to us is vital so that the next moms can use them safely.   Knowledge doesn’t always make for fun.  Generally, pump cleaning is slightly time consuming and rarely difficult, but it can be fussy because there tend to be easily overlooked nooks and crannies for dust and milk to hide.  Here is my ranking, from easiest to most difficult, of how hard it is to clean various milk production tools.

1.     1. Breasts (duh, but don’t you wish pumps had nice little Montgomery tubercles that automatically cleaned them, too?)

2.   2. Hygeia EnRiche– the handy little box shape and the fact that the cases are replaced with each new user make clean-up a snap.

3.   3. Symphony (Medela)— the simple shape makes it relatively easy to clean.  The case is bulky, but not overly hard to get clean.

4.   4. Lactina (Medela)—a great pump, but persnickety to clean.  It has a rather irregular shape with small spaces that are hard to get into.  Moms almost invariably return Lactinas with some part of the kit attached—it’s not a big deal but adds another step to the cleaning process.  The case itself is a pain in the neck.  It’s nearly impossible to clean without a lot of toothbrush action and frequent sighs because (once you are sure you have it clean) you invariably find yet another spot that needs a scrub.

5.   5. Ameda Elite—these are pumps that could very well cause the nicest peer to say things she thought she stopped saying once she had kids.  It takes twice as long to clean these as any other pumps because so many places are hard to get into, even with a toothbrush.  The case has a lot of styrofoam that’s hard to clean and hard to get around to clean the rest of the case.  I also never to seem to get the case back together properly on the first try.  The pump itself is fine; it just isn’t cleaner friendly.

In your pump cleaning journey, you will have many interesting experiences.  Besides cleaning pumps so milky you wonder if the mom even had the bottle attached while she was pumping, I personally got to clean a pump with a case I was pretty sure had been dragged through the mud and had so much dirt ground into the strap I was afraid I would never get it clean.  As you continue your journey, others will share their stories.  You may wonder what kind of scary stories we breastfeeding types tell to one another by the campfire or water cooler—how about the one where it looked like a mom had spilled a whole can of soda into an Ameda Elite?  Have you heard the one where someone was just about to start to clean what looked like an innocent Lactina…….. when all of the sudden………roaches………..(seriously roaches)……… came crawling out of the pump?  The theme from Psycho always plays in my head whenever anyone mentions this story.

Nightmarish pump stories are very rare of course, but it’s good to keep in mind how good you have it when someone brings a pump back in pristine shape.  Or is it a good thing?  Generally, if someone brings back a pump and it looks immaculate, chances are it’s never been used (and you still have to clean it anyway).  I shall therefore pass on the wisdom handed down to me by my mentor: Keep in mind, as you scrub yet another mini milk cache with a toothbrush in that Lactina case, that it’s great to see milk there. It means you know that the mom used that pump and her baby got at least a bit more breastmilk than he may have gotten if the mom never tried to pump at all and just stopped breastfeeding.  Let that be your mantra as you raise your toothbrushes high.

How to Advocate for Babywearing

Interestingly (or pathetically) enough, I saw this version of the song before I saw the original one.  I definitely prefer the mamas and babies!

The Best Breastfeeding Story Ever

I wanted to start the blog on a positive note, and what could be better than The Best Breastfeeding Story Ever?  You may think that this would only happen in a peer's late night fantasies, but let me tell you, dear reader, that this actually happened to me.

I was seeing a mother who was having some problems getting her baby to latch.  She had successfully breastfed her first child, and she was very frustrated that she couldn't get her new baby to the breast. She was also unhappy about supplementing with formula.  The baby was maybe about two weeks old.  We worked together to try to get the baby to latch. The little one was having trouble opening his mouth wide enough; he rooted beautifully but once he had the breast in his mouth would slip off and get frustrated.  Baby was quite hungry at this point, so I suggested feeding him a little from the bottle to take the edge off his hunger and make him more patient as we continued to try to latch.  We finally got baby to latch and nurse successfully with the help of a nipple shield.  He got a good hold on the breast, nursed for about 10 minutes, and when he came off the breast there was milk in the shield and a blissed out smile on baby's face.  As Mom was getting ready to leave, I was helping her put her things back in her diaper bag.  When I picked up the little bottle of formula she told me, "I don't need that-- throw it away!"  I admit I was just a bit gleeful as I threw that bottle of formula in the trash can. As if that wasn't wonderful enough, as I walked her to her car, the mother told me, "You changed my life."

Is that not The Best Breastfeeding Story Ever?