before you had your baby?
I have to admit that I was not informed very well until we took a breastfeeding class late in our pregnancy. The pregnancy books I read didn't really talk about breastfeeding too much. However, once we took our breastfeeding class, I felt much more relaxed about bf and much more informed. That spurned me to pick up a few more books that actually talked about it. By the time dd was born, I felt comfortable enough with what I knew to succeed with bf. Even then, I was faced with a barage of "old wives tales" misinformation and flat out crap. Most of it was by well-meaning people in my life. I think, sometimes, that if I was less informed, I too might have succumbed and did what they said.....give formula or stop bf. It was only through my own extensive research that I knew that:
-colostrum is excellent for baby for the first few days of life. And, NO, it doesn't mean that it's "bad milk" just because it is thin.
-proper latch-on prevents sore nippies, not the fact that your nipples have to "harden up."
-it's perfectly normal for baby to nurse every hour or even every half hour.... it doesn't mean that you aren't producing enough milk!
-Baby should nurse as long as she/he wants on one side in order to get both the foremilk and the hind milk.....the five-minute-a -breast rule is no longer valid!
-baby doesn't need any other food for at least the first 6 months.
(NO, solids should not be offered in order to "help baby sleep.")
And so on and so on........ I think I could write a short essay on some of the wrong advice I got. Even now, I get kind of mad when I think about how forcefully some of this bad advice was spooned out to me. Since having dd, I have encountered several other women who have given up on bf because they are simply uninformed or have received only the wrong information. I think how easily I could have been one of those women. Now, I strongly encourage everyone to take a class (if they don't want to read a book) and to call a lactation consultant or the local LLL.
Anyway, I was just wondering how much info you had before having your dc or were you just lucky enough to have lots of positive support?
Libby
mama to a little 16 month old bf bobka!
I have to admit that I was not informed very well until we took a breastfeeding class late in our pregnancy. The pregnancy books I read didn't really talk about breastfeeding too much. However, once we took our breastfeeding class, I felt much more relaxed about bf and much more informed. That spurned me to pick up a few more books that actually talked about it. By the time dd was born, I felt comfortable enough with what I knew to succeed with bf. Even then, I was faced with a barage of "old wives tales" misinformation and flat out crap. Most of it was by well-meaning people in my life. I think, sometimes, that if I was less informed, I too might have succumbed and did what they said.....give formula or stop bf. It was only through my own extensive research that I knew that:
-colostrum is excellent for baby for the first few days of life. And, NO, it doesn't mean that it's "bad milk" just because it is thin.
-proper latch-on prevents sore nippies, not the fact that your nipples have to "harden up."
-it's perfectly normal for baby to nurse every hour or even every half hour.... it doesn't mean that you aren't producing enough milk!
-Baby should nurse as long as she/he wants on one side in order to get both the foremilk and the hind milk.....the five-minute-a -breast rule is no longer valid!
-baby doesn't need any other food for at least the first 6 months.
(NO, solids should not be offered in order to "help baby sleep.")
And so on and so on........ I think I could write a short essay on some of the wrong advice I got. Even now, I get kind of mad when I think about how forcefully some of this bad advice was spooned out to me. Since having dd, I have encountered several other women who have given up on bf because they are simply uninformed or have received only the wrong information. I think how easily I could have been one of those women. Now, I strongly encourage everyone to take a class (if they don't want to read a book) and to call a lactation consultant or the local LLL.
Anyway, I was just wondering how much info you had before having your dc or were you just lucky enough to have lots of positive support?
Libby
mama to a little 16 month old bf bobka!
:LOL When I got pregnant, I read tons of books, and my sister (who nursed ds#2 for 13 months) laughed and said "This is all you need to know: Lansinoh will make your boobs feel better now, thrush hurts but it will go away, and the Isis is better than any other pump on the market." She was right, too 
:LOL
but I was sorely (literally) wrong. I cannot believe to this day how much the nurses in the hospital tried to sabotage my efforts to bf my child. They left little bottles of Similac everywhere and showed us how to use them even though we had specified we wanted to bf. 
They didn't send in a LC until about two days after we'd had her, and they were *up my ass* every hour to find out exactly how many milliliters she had consumed. I had no idea: my boob didn't come with graduated milliliter measurements.
(Really? No shit...) I tried cream, I called a LC to come to the house and look about latch-on problems, I tried EVERYTHING. It got to the point where she would latch on and stop crying and I would *start* because it felt like nursing a cat with a red-hot mouth.
