Nursing pointers

This was the question presented on Quora

What's something about nursing a newborn that they don't teach you while you're at the hospital?

 

This is the answer I wanted to memorialize, because I can never find my answers again on Quora

I had one baby at home and one at a birthing center. I don’t know what they tell you at hospitals. I did have a good lactation consultant from La Leche League who was super helpful. I nursed by first child until he was 22 months old and my second until he was 36 months old.

Some pointers:

Hold the baby like a guitar, tummy firmly planted against your tummy.

Try to be relaxed. If you’re having trouble letting down the milk, go into a warm shower, naked, with the baby. The warm water will help you let the milk down.

I found that I couldn’t speak to other people while nursing. It was too distracting. I needed to be in a kind of spaced out, meditative state.

Lactation is supply and demand. The more the baby nurses, the more milk you will have. If you start supplementing with formula, your supply with decrease. Just let the baby nurse more.

I agree with the comments below about nursing on demand, not according to a schedule.

Nursing releases endorphins. You may feel high. Some women have orgasm while nursing. Don’t feel ashamed of that.

Don’t feed the baby a bottle yourself. That will give the baby nipple confusion. The baby should only get a bottle when you’re not around. Nipple confusion can result in biting, inter alia, and poor nursing skills on the part of the baby.

The baby has a growth spurt around 3 months and then again around 6 months. The baby will have to nurse more frequently at this time, to get your milk supply to increase.  This doesn't mean you should switch to formula.

Co-sleeping is really helpful. I recommend the book “Nighttime Parenting” by Dr. Sears. A sober mom will *not* roll over on her baby. That’s only moms who are drunk or on drugs.

If you’re going to be expressing milk at work, be sure to get a good pump with good seal on your breasts and good suction. You can rent a hospital grade pump. Be assertive about asking for work accommodations for pumping.

Express and extra 2 oz every morning and freeze, it so you have backup. Be sure and express the same amount every day, to avoid infection. I found pint freezer bags to be the best thing for storing expressed milk in the freezer.

Be sure, when you express milk, that the caregiver at home feeds the baby the same amount you expressed.

Don’t wash your nipple area with soap, to avoid chapping, and to avoid feeding the baby chemicals. Just rinse there

Dripping is good, because it tells your breasts that they’re making too much milk and need to reduce. 

Don’t try to stop the dripping. 

Bras tend to stop the dripping. I found that they increased my risk of infection. I’ve had an aversion to bras ever since. There’s been research in France that bras actually undermine your pectoral muscles and increase sagging, contrary to popular belief.

Don’t try to out of the house within the first six weeks of childbirth, if you can avoid it. That’s how I got infections, too, over exerting myself.