Recently having been drawn into the world of breastfeeding, as an observer and assistant, it’s striking how different the dream is to the reality. Let’s be clear: despite being the best thing for your baby (as written on the side of formula) it’s not automatically a happy experience for mother and child. Attachment, the way in which the baby latches onto the nipple, seems to be the major problem point.<\/p>\n
It’s not that there’s a lack of information about breastfeeding out there, it’s just different people will express slightly different parts of the same generic advice. Trying to find out if using a bottle with expressed milk is a bad idea? Written advice varies: never before 2 weeks, between 2-4 weeks, not before 6 weeks, not after 6 weeks (as it won’t take). Speaking to actual people is contradictory. Their advice is that if you need to rest your breasts, a feed of expressed breast milk here and there won’t hurt a baby with a strong suck.<\/p>\n
And colic? Hazel’s just a week old, but some proportion (20-25%) of babies will apparently scream for hours every day for no reason. A quick Google<\/a> will reveal that it’s probably diet-related, and to remove milk from your diet. Maybe wheat, corn, soy and green vegetables<\/a> too.<\/p>\n What I find to be largely missing from the literature is actual scientific studies. This study<\/a> says that colic is not related to whether a baby is breastfed or bottle fed, which could indicate that the diet of a breastfeeding mother is potentially a minor contributor. Stress and irregular work patterns are flagged, though.<\/p>\n It’s a minefield, so read, read, read, and then assess what’s actually worthwhile. Advice changes over time (the Australian Breastfeeding Association says that sterilisation of sole-use breast pumps is unnecessary) so bear that in mind too. And enjoy the ride if you can; it’s definitely worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently having been drawn into the world of breastfeeding, as an observer and assistant, it’s striking how different the dream is to the reality. Let’s be clear: despite being the best thing for your baby (as written on the side of formula) it’s not automatically a happy experience for mother and child. Attachment, the way … Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/funwithstuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}