Breast Feeding with More Ease

1. Use common sense on what feels natural. Breast feeding really should be easier and simpler than bottle feeding! Feed on demand, but if your child tends to linger like my first child did, limit each side to twenty minutes in the beginning if you are doing both sides. Some babies like to just naturally suckle and linger but for your own mental health you probably will want to limit that a bit. Over time your baby will feed faster and more efficiently, thus taking a shorter amount of time.

2. You can part-time breast feed and part-time bottle feed if that works best for you.

There are no rules in this game so if a combination of nursing and bottle feeding seems a better adjustment, go for it! This is a great plan for working moms to maintain nursing for a longer time.

3. Pump and get the child to drink breast milk from a bottle once and awhile after the child is six weeks old.

Most lactation consultants agree this is when "nipple confusion" should end. If you do yourself this favor you will be grateful down the road because it can give you a much needed break. You can either get out or simply go to bed early! This will also allow for some much-needed bonding time for the baby's father if he then gives the child the bottle. Drinking from a bottle is actually a learned ability for the baby, so once the baby masters this do not stop. Give the infant a bottle every now and then so the child maintains this ability.

4. When you get those little breast bumps called blockages massage them out while you nurse.

This will prevent a nasty breast infection called Mastitis which gives you fever, chills, and a lot of breast pain. If you do develop Mastitis, continue to nurse despite any pain, it helps clear the infection and does not affect the baby. See a Doctor as soon as possible. Antibiotics will probably be prescribed to take care of the bacterial infection.

5. If you get repeated blockages or Mastitis soak your breasts in warm water or take warm showers to prevent these problems.

You did hear me correctly. After breast feeding for a total of almost three years with the combination of my two daughters, I suffered a lot of blockages and mastitis and this was a very good trick for helping me get less blockages and getting the milk to flow better if I did it before nursing. While soaking do some breast massage.

Summary

Breast-feeding is a wonderful way to bond with your child but you need to relax into the process. It is beneficial to both mother and babe because it is the perfect form of nourishment and statistics show it helps reduce a mother's risk of breast cancer. It should be the start of an amazing bond between parent and child that should last a lifetime!