Your milk production will increase automatically over the first few days, and frequent expression helps that happen faster, more smoothly, more fully, and with fewer problems.Īs your thick, small-quantity, sticky colostrum changes to thin, larger-quantity liquid milk, your baby will probably take more at each meal, and meals will probably be more widely spaced. Your baby may be eating a bit less because of this unaccustomed way of feeding, and you want to set up normal milk production. It’s important that you take out of your breast more colostrum and milk than your baby takes in. If you choose to pump, wipe off all the droplets you can with a clean finger, and give them to your baby. Colostrum is thick, sticky, and produced in very small amounts – often too small to cover the bottom of a container, so much of it simply sticks to the pump parts. In the first few days, hand expression is usually much more effective than pumping. Keep clean spoons handy and express your milk every hour or so, to begin building your milk production and to avoid breast problems. Supporting your increasing milk productionĮxpect your baby to want to feed at least every hour or two on the first day. Even if your baby didn’t nurse, keep cuddling together, skin-to-skin, which allows your baby easy access to your breast. Mothers and babies typically fall into a deep and peaceful sleep for more than an hour after their first nursing. You can also express directly into a syringe which you can get from a pharmacy or your healthcare provider. You will probably find hand-expressing directly onto a spoon the most effective and efficient way to go (cafeteria or takeaway spoons work well.) If you have a helper, they can tip the spoon into your baby’s mouth or wipe the droplets onto the tongue while you hand express into a second spoon. You may find that you can express the most colostrum in the first several hours after birth, when newborns typically have a long breastfeed. Keeping your baby fedĪsk your health care team to show you how to hand express your colostrum. Have your bare skins together (skin-to-skin) as much as you can. You can do all these most easily if you keep your baby with you as much as you can, especially on your body and front to front. Whatever the reason for your issues, you need to 1) keep your baby fed, 3) support and build your milk production, and 3) learn together. Sometimes it helps to take a step back, and remember that our bodies have adapted to feed our babies. Breastfeeding helpers have made many mistakes over the years, always with the best of intentions but not always with the best of results. Knowing too little… or knowing too much.While you and your health care team sort things out, remember time, patience, gentleness, and togetherness. Again, time, patience, gentleness, and togetherness. Some drugs take days or weeks to leave a newborn’s body. Time, patience, gentleness, and togetherness are your friends. Babies as early as 28 weeks may be able to nurse, but often it takes some weeks for them to latch or to nurse effectively. Newborns may be unable to nurse because of: If a newborn “won’t” nurse, it’s because the baby can’t nurse for some reason. THE NEWBORN WHO DOESN’T NURSEĪll mammals nurse after birth, without any special instructions, unless something interferes. You may also find our resources on nursing strikes helpful. If your baby is past the newborn stage, please skip to the section on Getting an Older Baby Back to the Breast below. We’ll look at possible causes and solutions for each of these situations. Some may have started out nursing and then stopped.
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