3
" A father from New Zealand, Harry Parke of Cambridge, told a group of fathers, "My wife and I figured that by nursing our first son, Christopher, we saved considerably in the first year by not using formula, sterilizers, early solids, electricity, birth control means, etc. Raewyn immediately decided that the money saved was to be a deposit on a freezer, and now it stands in the hall. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
5
" TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877-4-LA LECHE (877-452-5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
10
" TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877–4-LA LECHE (877–452–5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
12
" A baby kept away from his mother burns more calories and can become jittery and distressed if his blood sugar level gets too low. A baby whose mother is diabetic can be born on a “sugar high” and can come crashing down after birth. Fortunately, just being skin to skin with his mother can raise a baby’s blood sugar, whether or not he eats while he’s there. Unfortunately, some hospitals want to check the blood sugars of all babies, especially those designated as “large,” whether they show symptoms or not, and have thresholds below which they’ll want to supplement, whether or not there are symptoms. What You Can Do The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine has a thorough, research-based protocol at bfmed.org that you can share with your doctors if needed. Some of its main points:
Breastfeeding within the first hour after birth is important. Babies with no risk factors or symptoms should not be tested. At-risk babies should be screened until their blood sugar normalizes. There is no evidence that hypoglycemic infants who show no symptoms should be treated.
If supplements are needed, the preferred order is the mother’s own milk, donor human milk, elemental formulas, and partially hydrolyzed formulas. Standard formula is the least desirable option. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
13
" The Four-Month Fussies Your baby’s growing awareness has its temporary downside. At an LLL meeting a while back, a mother arrived with a four-month-old, saying he had begun “nursing funny.” Another mother in the room said, “My baby’s four months old, too, and she’s started nursing funny.” And another mother spoke up with the same age baby and same concern. We dubbed it the “Four-Month Fussies” but didn’t have a perfect solution for them beyond nursing in a quiet room, minimizing distractions, time, and nursing in whatever position the baby seemed to need. The group concluded that by around four months, babies had gained enough intellectual ability to tune in to the room around them but didn’t yet have enough gray matter to tune in and nurse well. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
14
" LONG AGO, BEFORE there were baby food manufacturers or even spoons, babies ate what their parents ate. Not the nuts and tough meats, of course, but whatever family foods they could handle. Most likely no one had the time or interest to feed a baby who wasn’t already reaching for someone else’s food. Long ago, of course, all babies were breastfed. During the first half of the twentieth century, there was a dramatic shift away from breastfeeding. Mothers were given a recipe for making “formula” for their babies, but let’s face it, those formulas were pretty crude. Babies sometimes showed signs of malnutrition after just a few weeks, and doctors realized they needed to provide some supplements. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
19
" All medications, including those in epidurals, reach your baby through the placenta, affecting his ability to find the breast, latch, and suck effectively after he’s born. Depending on how long the epidural was in place and the drugs used in it, these effects can last from a few days to a few weeks. Pain-relieving drugs reduce your own endorphins, which may increase your baby’s discomfort, both before the birth and after the birth, when more endorphins are passed on through your milk. Your baby may cry more. Or, without your natural endorphins, you and baby may feel “flatter” emotionally, making it harder for you to respond to each other. Epidurals can cause your temperature to rise, which raises your baby’s temperature. He may be sent to the nursery for observation and antibiotics in case he has an infection. And if an epidural or induction included hours of IV fluids, your normal breast and nipple shape may be distorted, making latching difficult even with skilled help. This can be hard information to read, but it’s what the research very clearly shows. As childbirth educator Linda Smith, IBCLC, comments, “If your friend tells you how she ‘loved her epidural,’ ask her how her first month of motherhood went. "
― La Leche League International , The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
