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| Breast Feeding Tips For New Born Baby |
In all our years thinking about breasts, I doubt many of us had concentrated too hard on the idea that breasts of our acquaintance would one day provide the only source of nourishment to a baby in which we had a well-documented 50 per cent genetic share. And yet the evidence is before us, often within minutes of birth. You've had one vast shock - a baby - and here's another.
Some fathers, I have to say, don't like it. Having formed an intimate alliance with the mother's breasts, they see their place taken by this greedy little latecomer who appears to have instant access to the precious globes. Indeed, over the next few months, your partner may only ever wear clothes that allow her to whip out a tit at a second's notice, in a way that you may have been trying to persuade her to do for some time.
Junior has but a small stomach, and becomes hungry appallingly quickly. In public places he or she needs to be latched on in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Only a saint wouldn't feel jealous. Correction: only a dead female saint wouldn't feel jealous.
Nonetheless, breast milk is one of nature's little miracles, and it can help turn your other little miracle into a rather large miracle. For the first four months a breastfeeding baby will consume nothing else. Current advice has it that you should not introduce solids into the baby's diet until six months, although fashions change so fast in parenting that the autumn season's breastfeeding advice could be completely different. No one, though, argues about the value and general goodness of breast milk. It has everything the baby needs.
In past generations everyone was told to bottle-feed, as formula milk was a scientific miracle created by huge unpleasant multinational companies unable to charge you for mammary use. It took 30 years or so, but the world finally saw through this. Formula milk was only ever an approximation of breast milk anyway. Why use the fake when the real thing is freely available?
This is not to say that breastfeeding is straightforward. It almost never is. Few mothers or babies take to it immediately and without a struggle. There is a technique to learn, which sounds easy enough when you are being told about it at antenatal classes, but can prove problematic when there's a real live baby to feed. If Junior doesn't clamp on right, if the mother is tense (and it's hard to see how she can be anything else), if a hundred small things don't quite work, the whole business can be hellish.
Sore, cracked and even blistered nipples, blocked milk ducts, mastiffs ... maybe we shouldn't be surprised that more than half of new mothers in the UK have given up on breastfeeding by six weeks. Some are repelled by it, others overwhelmed by it; many just decide it's not for them. As always, respect her wishes. They are her breasts, after all.
Breastfeeding is fascinating to watch. Baby doesn't just suck at the breast, he or she clamps the whole mouth over it, creating a suction effect. (Unlike adults, babies can breathe and swallow at the same time.) And there isn't just one big hole, there are lots of little holes. Milk comes out of the nipple as water comes out of a sprinkler. It's common for one breast to produce far more milk than the other: even the smallest baby will soon work this out and start to declare a preference.
Note that there is no connection between original breast size and milk production. I say "original' because even the tiniest flea-bite breasts will attain milky grandeur by the time Junior homes in on them. They really are the most amazing piece of equipment. In each breast there are around 20 segments, or lobes, each of which is made up of glands called alveoli which cluster together like bunches of grapes. Each alveolus is lined with milk-producing cells. To find out more, you can check out Breast Feeding Tips For New Born Baby.