There are many reasons to breastfeed your baby and also there is much literature out there that already can tell you all of that. My article here is (I hope) to give you encouragement in the art of breastfeeding if you are already experiencing problems, but mostly to help you to prevent problems in the first place.
I think that we must start at the beginning.
In order for you to have enough milk to sustain your baby completely without a bottle or other supplement, you must realize the basics.
Milk is made in your breast by the act of stimulous to the nipple. What this means is that the more your baby sucks, the more milk you will have. There is also another factor, and that is, that there seems to be a time limit. In other words, the more that your baby sucks during the first few weeks of his life, determines how much milk you will have for the rest of the months that follow.
There is a problem with this though, in that babies in the first few weeks of life, are usually drousy or asleep when they are supposed to eat.
I would just like to state here that there are only a handful of women who will be successful in breastfeeding, when feeding on a schedule set up by a doctor or other medical “expert”. This is true for 2 reasons. The most obvious being that every baby is different and what might be a good schedule for one baby, actually starves another. The second reason is because if the breast is left for more than a couple hours (actually, I think the limit is about 1 and ½ hours) without stimulous, then a message is sent to the breast to stop making milk. If this happens in the first few weeks (before the right amount of milk is established) then it effectively curtails the whole breastfeeding process, before it can ever get truly started.
So to reiterate, if you expect to breastfeed only every 3 hours (the most common doctor recommendation) forget it.
You won’t be successful.
So how do you get a sleeping baby to nurse and do you have to nurse every 1 and ½ hours?
The answer to the second question is yes, but it doesn’t actually have to be your baby. You can use a pump or manually express milk every 1 and ½ hours. In personal experience though, I never had good luck with any pump. I would just manually express enough to start the “gush” of letdown. It is very important to remember to stimulate the breast at least every 1 and ½ hours, until the gush of letdown.
The term letdown is very common among new mothers, causing quite a few embarrasing moments, when letdown occurs in a public place. All the more reason to manually induce letdown, when you know you will soon be in a public place. I have gone into public restrooms, just to induce a letdown, so that it wouldn’t occur unannounced. Also you can wear pads, but I found that 2 or 3 pads were not enough to contain the amount of the letdown.
Now about the sleeping baby, first if your baby was completely full-term, then I would not wake him up. Most likely he will wake on his own wanting to eat way before you are ready to feed him. All three of my babies were beyond full-term by about 2 weeks, and they literally wanted to eat every hour (except for at night).
If your baby is at all premature, then it will be hard to get him to wake up for his feeding, which will make breastfeeding all the more difficult. Even though I said you could artificially stimulate your breast every hour and a half, if you don’t actually nurse your child every 3 hours, not only will your child not be fed adequately, but artificial stimulae only works in addition to your baby’s actual sucking. If your baby does not suck, you will eventually end up with little or no milk no matter how much you stimulate artificially.
There are books out there that tell you how to wake up your baby for feeding, examples are washing his face with a damp cloth, giving him a bath, changing his diaper or his clothes, etc.
Now this part is important, keeping in mind what I have already said, it is important to never feed your baby, in the first few weeks, without first inducing a gush or letdown. (You may catch this in a bottle and freeze it for later use or throw it away.) There are several reasons for not feeding your baby this letdown, at least not when he is a newborn. The milk that comes out in a gush is mostly water, and while it will quench your baby’s thirst it will fill him up before he gets the good stuff that has most of the nutrients. If your baby did not go full-term the force of the gush can actually be uncomfortable and cause a drowning sensation, as your baby gets more milk than he can swallow.
Also, if you wait to feed your baby until after the gush of letdown, he will have to actually suck, which will stimulate your breast to make more milk. It has also been determined that when your baby has to work for his milk it aleviates the natural desire your baby has for sucking, which some parents do with a pacifier.
I personally hate pacifiers, not just because the baby might become attached to it physicologically and physically. But because it interferes with successful breastfeeding. If your baby is already “sucked out”, then he won’t be too desirous of working for his meal. And the more premature your baby is the more of a problem this could be. There are babies though, that are just plain suckers and want to be sucking something all of the time. In that case, it might be ok to give him a pacifier. But only give it to him after you have fed him and burped him, and then take it away when he is asleep. Also, don’t give it to him for about a half hour before feeding.
While we are talking about pacifiers, we might talk about artificial nipples of any kind. Most newborns are confused when fed sometimes at the breast, sometimes from a bottle and also given a pacifier. In my experience, it is best to soley offer the breast for the first 2 to 3 weeks. It seems that once a baby is given an artificial nipple on a bottle, he rarely wants to go back to the breast. So be careful.
Here is a controversial thought, how about letting your breast be his pacifier, it will kill two birds with one stone? This is what they do in primitive indigineous tribes. In fact, in some third world countries, they have a rest period of 40 days. The woman is not allowed to get up from her birthing bed during that time and the husband has to kill a chicken every day and cook soup with it, which he brings to his wife in bed. During this time the baby sleeps in the same bed and nurses pretty much constantly.
One last thing, since the more your breast is stimulated the more milk you produce, it is only natural that the earlier you start the better results. I personally started during pregnancy. While taking my shower or bath I would express as much colostrum as possible. Actually, once I got it started I would get tired of expressing before it would stop producing. By my third pregnancy, I could express quite a lot in my third month along. And toward the later part of that pregnancy, I was actually getting letdowns of colostrum. When I actually did get my milk I had so much that I literally could not go out of the house because of all the letdowns. I think I could have easily nursed twins, but I didn’t have a chance to try it.
Now, for the problems.
Fair complected women might have problems with sore nipples, I did.
After having a nightmare experience with my first baby, I finally came on a solution, which was so simple that I never got sore nipples again with my second and third babies. Most books and the La Leche League will tell you to hair dry your nipples and to keep them dry. Forget it, bad advice, or at least it was for me. Hair dryers are bad for your hair, just think what they do to your nipples. They make them crack and peel. Uggh, I shudder to remember. I got blisters so bad that I actually had fresh blood every time my baby nursed. Then I got mastitis, because it was so painfull to breastfeed, that I didn’t nurse my baby long enough for my breasts to empty. (That is another reason to feed your newborn after the letdown.) Mastitis is when milk stays in your milk ducts and gets thick, goes stale and gets infected. After the letdown, your milk becomes thicker, richer, creamier and has more nutrients and it takes vigorous sucking on the part of your baby to get it all out.
Back to the sore nipples issue.
Some creams are good, but then you have to worry about if its ok for your baby to eat the stuff, etc. Actually, the La Leche League has the answer, but they won’t tell it to you. They sell some plastic doughnut cone like things, which they caution you, they are only for use if you have inverted nipples (When your nipples are like hidden in your breast and don’t stick out) and that they are only for use during pregnancy. Well, since I’m an innovative kind of person, I decided to wear them after I had the baby, and lo a behold, amazingly NO SORENESS.
I actually started wearing them with my first baby, after I had a bunch of open sores, because I could not stand even my clothes touching me. Within just a few days I was completely healed. I kept wearing them for a few more weeks just to make sure that it didn’t happen again. Your nipples do get toughened up though eventually, and then you can stop using them. But I found out that the soreness came back with my second child, so out came the doughnut cones again. This time I never had any sores and the soreness dissappeared after wearing the cones. With my third child I just wore the cones, from the beginning and didn’t get sore at all. I wore the cones ALL THE TIME, even sleeping. I only wore the cones for about 3 weeks, though.
There are two types of doughnut cones, one comes with vent holes, the other doesn’t. The one with vent holes is ok to use during pregnancy if you need to for the inverted nipple problem, that was not my problem.
These ones with vent holes are no good after you have the baby, because they will fill up with milk and then slop all over the place. When using the ones without vent holes, be sure to remember to empty them frequently. Also, I think they are dishwasher safe, I didn’t have a dishwasher though. I was in the WalMart a few days ago, and noticed that they have breast cones there also. I did not see any without any holes, though. They had some to use before and after delivery. They both had holes in the top, but the ones they advertised for use after delivery, came with cotton sponge inserts to absorb the milk.
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