Accentuate the positives – part one

Reading through the last few – well okay all – of my posts, I’ve realised that there is more than a tinge of negativity.

So I thought it was time to redress the balance and write a few positive posts.

I just wanted to say, I love breastfeeding. I didn’t always but there will be plenty of negative posts to say why not, but now, I love it.

Three reasons why I love breastfeeding 

I love it because if baby B is hurt – say, if he falls over from a sitting position when his mother should have been watching him – of course this would never happen, just if it ever did, not that it would -  a few minutes of suckling can change him back into a happy, contented baby.

If baby B is tired, a few seconds suckling can send him drifting into a peaceful sleep already in a lap-based position, leaving my hands free for computer or remote control.

I can do it lying down, and often it sends me to sleep too, so a daytime nap for baby B often ends up as a – much needed – daytime nap for us both.

Three things I love about breastfeeding

I love it when baby B has a suckle, then smiles at me and in doing so “falls” off the breast. It makes me smile too.

I love it when baby B pats – in fact, almost slaps – my breast to – I assume – make the milk flow faster. The look of intense concentration on his face his hilarious. I joke that he’s trying to have a milkshake!

I love it when baby B and I are bathing together and I’m holding him sitting up; he bends his head back, opens wide and latches himself on, as if to say, “while I’m here Mum, it’d be rude not to!”

Will try to think of more positives over the next few days.

An alternative to THAT advert

You know the advert I mean. “I promise to do my share the the night feeds,” etc. “Aw, that advert brought a tear to my eye,” women say, dreaming that one can only have the ideal husband and father if one feeds one’s baby a certain brand of formula. (Oh, but it’s follow-on milk, from six to twenty-four months; if you look closely enough, you can see it on the packets featured in the advert, can’t you? Ah well that’s all right then.)

Why can’t we have a breastfeeding alternative to that advert? It would go a little something like this:

<Gorgeous bloke massaging partner’s shoulders as she breastfeeds the newborn baby>

“I promise to support you in your decision to breastfeed, and never to suggest that any problems would be easily solved with a bottle.”

<Picture of said bloke cooking hot casserole as partner nurses the baby>

“I promise to “mother” you, as you mother our baby, and never to hassle you about household chores.”

<Picture of bloke carrying baby around in a baby sling in dead of the night as woman lies upstairs asleep>

“I promise to learn ways of settling our baby to sleep.”

<Picture of this lovely chap – tastefully done of course, this is a prime time telly slot – taking a bath with the baby>

“I promise to do my share of baby related duties, seeing them not as chores but as bonding time.”

<Picture of Mum and Dad sharing sleep – safely – with baby>

“I promise to welcome our baby into the family bed, if that makes it easier for you to breastfeed.”

<Lovely picture of Mum, Dad and baby, all smiles>

“And all this I promise because I know that breastfeeding will ensure our baby has normal good health and a happy start to life.”

What do you reckon?

Bestfeeding and other books

Lots of people recommend this book and I just wanted to add a note of caution. It really didn’t work for me.

The book’s insistence that the baby will always come off by himself when he’s had enough really got to me in the early weeks, when baby B did anything but that. I drove myself into a tizz wondering why he would never come off by himself. Also the advice to only ever interrupt the feed for social reasons and very rarely also got to me. I’d be sat there for an hour wondering if I’d ever get to go to the toilet. I had no idea to tell if he was “finished” because he’d never come off voluntarily.

Also the advice on positioning suggested that baby lying on Mum’s chest face down on the boob was probably not such a fantastic idea… which from those wonderful self-attachment videos I realise now is not correct; in fact it is quite a natural position.

It suggested that if you have big boobs, you’ll probably need to support them for the entire feed. Now imagine holding a milk-heavy K-cup nork with one hand and a baby with the other and you can see why I found breastfeeding exhausting in the early days! (I will post on big nork positioning later). The picture of the woman with a piece of elasticated fabric wrapped around her huge boob just frightened me; how would you do something like that in public, I wondered?

It was only when I read Sharon Trotter’s book “Breastfeeding, the Essential Guide” that I realised that sometimes babies don’t come off the breast by themselves – they fall asleep there and you have to take them off with a little finger. And this is perfectly good and natural. And only when I read Sheila Kitzinger’s “Breastfeeding your Baby” that I learned that there are all sorts of patterns to a feed; nibbling at the breast, sleeping, coming off and going back on again…

Which is why when I gave away my copy of Bestfeeding on freecycle, I made sure I’d annotated the copy to point out these discrepancies.

Breastfeeding your Baby

Breastfeeding: The Essential Guide

Bestfeeding

Self-attachment

I was re-reading “The Naked Ape” the other evening (as you do) and read Desmond Morris’ take on breastfeeding. He reckoned that unlike other mammals, human babies can’t attach themselves to the breast which is why women often have problems with babies getting the nipple far enough back in their mouths and causing sore nipples and often the end of breastfeeding.

Well, it’s not the case!

Babies, like other mammals, can self-attach! There is a DVD you can buy called “Delivery Self Attachment” but it’ll cost you a fair few quid for six minutes’ worth of video. However, on my blogroll, you’ll be able to see two links, one for a co-bathing baby self-attaching, and the other called “breast crawl” (it is a bit odd, as you can only see pixelated faces, but the message is there).

Trouble is, if you listen to the “breast crawl” and “Delivery Self Attachment” videos you’d be forgiven for thinking this can only happen immediately after the birth.

But actually, the reflexes that babies use to crawl up the Mum’s stomach and self attach to the breast last for about six weeks. Six weeks! That means that even if you get off to a really, really bad start, you have six whole weeks to let baby sort it out himself / herself!

I only wish I’d known about this. I didn’t find out about it until B was ten weeks, when K first introduced me to N. By then, when I put him on my chest, he looked at me as if to say, “er, Mum, what are you doing?” and then started crying, confused.

In none of my breastfeeding manuals did it mention this.

Time to re-write the books?