How to avoid having your breastfeeding journey sabotaged! My 3 main ways!
Breastfeeding has been suffering over the years, and it’s no surprise to me with the rise of medical interventions for women choosing to birth in a hospital setting.
Unfortunately, the cascade of medical interventions is one of the main reasons that breastfeeding is often sabotaged.
Inductions, including that dreaded stretch and sweep, medications, fear mongering, uneducated providers and nurses, pressure to feed formula amongst other things are all going to contribute to how your baby is born and ultimately how you are able to feed your baby.
Let’s begin chatting about the science behind milk production.
The last part of pregnancy, baby will send a message to Moms brain, indicating that his or her lungs are now ready to breath on earth. This message is sent through a series of hormones, everything is hormone driven and its flawless. There is a cascade of messages sent to various parts of Moms brain to start to prepare for birth as well as prepare to feed baby once baby is earthside. When this hasn’t happened yet, we are simply not ready to give birth or feed our babies.
Here’s 3 ways you can avoid having your breastfeeding journey sabotaged:
Avoid any and all inductions. Baby is not ready. Mom’s body is not ready. An induction is an induction is an induction. I’m talking “stretch and sweeps”, curb walking, miles circuit, castor oil, medical with foley/synthetic prostaglandins etc etc… Mom will go into spontaneous labour when both baby and mom are ready. Anything that is done to try and speed up the process, can and will affect your breastfeeding journey. The reason why an induction is absolute torture is because the mothers brain has not yet built up the endorphin receptors she needs in order to receive the endorphins she will produce as natural pain killers when spontaneous labour does occur. When we force a baby out before it is ready, both mom and baby suffer and most likely a cascade of interventions will follow, leading to further breastfeeding complications. I’m not even going to get into how absurd it is that medical teams are offering stretch and sweeps and then suggesting mothers take Tylenol. Tylenol is a protoglandin enhibitor. If we are wanting women to go into labour from the stretch and sweeps then why are they offering Tylenol when the point of the stretch and sweet was to activate the prostaglandins? Who knows why they do these foolish and silly practices, if they cared they would actually think about the consequences. It’s time for us all to say no to these harmful practices and allow babies to come when they are ready.
Be clear you want no one else touching your baby. Babies are born with a microbiome on their skin that is directly connected with moms microbiome. When anyone else touches your baby, they transfer theirs to them. It is not necessary for anyone else to “catch” your baby other then yourself, your partner or someone you really trust who is wearing gloves and will only hold your baby for a short moment while passing baby to you. No one should rub your baby or wipe your baby clean. No one should cut your babies cord. No one should panic, the environment needs to stay calm and quiet while Mom comes back to earth and baby adjusts to the room. Once baby is earthside, baby should come to moms chest and stay there. Never put a hat on this baby. Mom will smell the top of babies head and the smell will trigger a hormonal response to tell the moms brain that the baby is now earthside, she can release her placenta and she will need to start producing milk. When we put a hat on baby, we severly interfere with this chemical process that is essential for the placenta to release and for successful breastfeeding. Your babies cord is their lifeline and until it is white or has stopped pulsing, any blood that doesn’t make it to baby can affect baby and their ability to breastfeed.
Allow baby to do the work. After an hour or two of baby being earthside, he or she may start to show signs of looking for moms breast. Baby may open their mouth and stick their tongue out. They may “root”, which is where they kind of bury their faces into moms chest. Moms colostrum, which is the first source of milk for baby, will smell like amniotic fluid. Moms nipples will turn a bit darker during pregnancy and this is so baby can see the dark round circle, smell the fluid and be enticed to work their way down to the nipple. This is where other people in the room need to sit on their hands. Allowing baby to naturally crawl down to moms nipple and do the work themselves is essential for successful breastfeeding. When people start grabbing moms breast and “hamburger” it, or forcing the nipple into babies mouth or worse forcing baby onto the breast, it only causes chaos and stress for both mom and baby. Mom can intuitively hold her breast and help baby if she feels baby needs it.
These are my 3 main ways but there are many other ways you can support your breastfeeding journey. I am also not saying this is absolute. Just because you have a medically managed birth, doesn’t mean you wont necessarily breastfeed. It just might take some extra work. And even moms that have an undisturbed birth at home sometimes even struggle, but I can tell you from experience, its nothing like when the medical team has sabotaged it.
You deserve better Momma! Consider staying home, giving birth in sovereignty with wise women beside you encouraging you.
xoxo
Kristin
