Breastfeeding Tips

[emmab96]

Hello Everyone!

My baby is due in two months and I'm going to try to exclusively breast feed.
This will be my first time breastfeeding does anyone have any tips or advice that I need to know before they're born?
Like anything you wish you knew or essentials I need to take with me to hospital it's likely I'll be staying in hospital a for a few days once baby is born so just want to try and make sure I'll have anything I will need.
Thank you!

My DD is 9 months and has been exclusively breastfed, nipple cream is a must for the hospital and ask if they have a breastfeeding specialist there, I spoke to one for over an hour on the ward and her advice was priceless!!

I won't lie, the first 2 months were pretty painful and difficult (started to worry I wouldn't be able to do it) then one day she fed and all the pain just stopped! Now I'll be heartbroken once she stops feeding 🙁

I brought lots of different things to help when my DD was born a year ago. I didn't use a thing! She's still feeding now and there's nothing I need extra - oh, except breast pads but you won't need these until your milk comes in a few days later. So I'd say don't worry, you just need your boobs!

My biggest tip for anyone is be kind to yourself. I didn't produce much milk at all. My DS fed every 90 mins morning and night as I was hardly producing anything. And I carried on for 7 months!!!! I was so consumed with "breast is best" that I couldn't bring myself to move to the bottle. I had the most horrendous guilt. It nearly wrecked my marriage as I was exhausted. I would pump like 1oz in half hour.
So whatever happens, your wellbeing is just as important as baby's.

Take a feeding pillow into hospital with you. It can double up as an extra pillow for you and will help you to get a much better latch than trying to use the very flat NHS pillows.

I would say the NHS advice is really hit and miss, so ask around for NCT / LLL / breastfeeding drop ins and find out when / where they are. 6 or 7 NHS professionals missed DD2's 90% tongue tie 🥴 (second tip - get tongue tie ruled out early doors!!). If funds allow, looking for your local lactation consultant and getting an early session booked will massively help.

As an aside, depending on what happens during the birth, loads of people have to give a little bit of formula top ups on top of breastfeeding to get baby through the first couple of days (i had high BP and preeclampsia twice - the meds i was taking caused DD1 and DD2s blood sugars to go a bit wonky and so they needed more support than I could give them before my milk came in). It absolutely doesn't mean that you can't EBF, so please don't be disheartened if the midwives want you to do that. Getting in touch with a professional once you are discharged can get you back to ebf again. I wish someone had told me that because I was very hard on myself with DD1 (who also had a NICU / SCBU stay) about having to give her formula when really I should have recognised that she literally needed it to survive until I had recovered enough.

Good luck with the birth!

https://lcgb.org/find-an-ibclc/

My tips as a bf peer supporter are:

• Go to a bf group often free no need to book run by the NCT or your local NHS community Trust. Seeing it in practice is so helpful and we welcome mums to be.
• Get a tongue tie assessment if bf is difficult and you can't get baby to latch on or baby latches fine but you experience pain (rather than just a feeling of it being unusual/new sensations).
• Never give up on a bad day! Hold in mind the benefits of bf and seek support but only stop if you want to not because you feel like you "can't".
• Ask people who offer to help "watch the baby" to clean your kitchen, vacuum and cook so that you can spend as much time as baby needs doing skin to skin contact, baby wearing and establishing feeding (ideally topless in bed with netflix and snacks/drinks on demand!)

I'm still tandem feeding my youngest two little ones and have been through ups and downs including mastitis, vasospasm, feeding with shields, exclusive pumping, tongue tie and aversions. I wouldn't have got to "sapphire boobs" without an incredible group of supportive women. Find your village and all that.

Best of luck for a positive birth!

Don't bother trying to express colostrum before you give birth unless it is coming out really easily. If your baby is small or loses a lot of weight in the first few days, you will be able to express colostrum much more easily after giving birth. So if you think you might want to do it, just pack a few syringes in your hospital bag and do it if you think your baby could use a bit of extra help.

Be prepared for it to hurt. Lots of people say it doesn't hurt if you're doing it properly and your baby doesn't have a tongue tie but in my experience it did hurt, for about 6 weeks. What saved my breastfeeding in the early weeks was nipple shields. I only used them when it was very painful, and I would put one on for the first minute or so of the feed until I was in full flow, then quickly unlatch my baby and remove the shield and then latch him back on.

I didn't get on with nipple cream at all. The Lansinoh just clogged up my nipples and made the whole thing worse. I ended up having to scrape the top layer of my nipples off with a muslin in the shower one day. After that I just rubbed in a few drops of milk after each feed to keep moisturised.

I would also recommend getting a haakaa to collect a bit of milk to freeze in the early days, and then introduce a bottle when your baby is about a month old. My son had a bottle maybe once or twice a week when I was on maternity leave and then would take one just fine from the childminder. We didn't bother with my daughter and then she never took one when we wanted her to. Even if you don't plan to be apart from your baby, unexpected things do happen and it's good to know your baby can survive for a few feeds from someone else.

Boppy pillow - i can't be without one.

Colostrum harvesting - give it a go. I got separated from baby unexpectedly and it meant they could give him.colostrum instead of formula.

Look up videos on proper latching

If you can afford it, pay for a lactation consultant. I had one and she was worth her weight in gold.

Breastfeeding and sleeping in the early weeks are not compatible. Don't be tempted to give formula at night so that you can sleep as it can affect your supply (and your periods coming back).

LOTS of skin on skin in the early days. You want that baby on your chest all the time. In his nappy on your naked chest, with a blanket on top.

People will tell you formula fed babies sleep better. Statistically it's not true. In the early days, formula will fill them up quickly but that evens out.

I know a few have mentioned tongue tie on here, my baby would latch perfect in the first few weeks but was gagging and vomiting on and off the whole feed, I started panicking thinking reflux, dairy intolerance and in the end was told she was ever so slightly tongue tie which we got cut. I regret this as it turns out I just have an extremely massive oversupply of milk with an overactive let down so was just jet washing baby with milk which was to much for her to handle.

i just wanted to make you aware of an over supply of milk and over active let down. This can cause just as much stress and problems as an under supply of milk.

I wish someone told me -

if your baby is latching on and you can see milk transfer is happening baby is sucking and swallowing then relax and give things time even if it’s a little uncomfortable (let down of milk was painful for me) just give everything more time!

As long as :
Baby is putting on weight
Sucking and swallowing you will see and hear
You are not in absolute agony (it’s not massively comfortable at first your nipples almost went to harden up a little I found lol)
Try to relax and reassure yourself your baby and you are learning from each other, it’s in baby’s blueprint to latch onto that breast and feed with a little help from mum!

if you want to introduce a bottle of expressed milk don’t wait to long as my baby won’t take a bottle now at 6 months x

I wish I also tried to feed lay down when I got home as I didn’t try this for 3 months. It really really helps you just rest your eyes and body in the early days when the night feeds are long.

Wishing you all the best for baby’s birth and your breast feeding journey ❤️ you have thousands of mums on mumsnet waiting to support you! X

Thank you all for the tips! They're greatly appreciated.
I plan on taking it as it comes and if it doesn't work out I won't pressure myself but I would love to make it work for us both! A few of my friends have said the first few weeks can be difficult but just to push through them while we both adjust but I'll definitely look into a lactation consultant and perhaps some BF groups for some advice once baby is here.
Thanks everyone

When you feel yourself flagging and begin to doubt whether your baby is getting enough milk, instead of considering topping the baby up with formula, top yourself up with a sandwich or some other nutritious snack instead. I ate LOADS! Dh used to leave a couple of sandwiches on plates in the fridge when he went to work, so I could grab one when wrestling a fretful baby. Read up about cluster feeding!

Oh yes, eat and drink!

When I had my first I made a batch of oatmeal and raisin cookies (from the Jane's Patisserie website, super easy recipe) and kept them in a biscuit tin and I had one at 5am every day like clockwork.

Definitely spend money on a lactation consultant, it genuinely makes all the difference. I really feel like nct/bump and baby don’t spend enough time preparing you for it. Be prepared for a few tough weeks initially. Don’t be afraid to combi feed if you need the break, you’ll read not to but my dh gave both of ours an evening bottle of formula before bed to give me a break for the first 6 weeks and it made all the difference. I then went on to bf exclusively until 12 months. Lots of nipple balm and compresses (I like the multi mam ones). And pillows as people have mentioned. Good luck!

It’s really individual IMO, I heard horror stories about nipple soreness in breastfeeding and I can honestly say that I wasted my money buying posh nipple cream because I had no issues with that. I really relied on a feeding pillow and yet others say they never used one! Controversially, maybe bring some of the readymade formula because you just never know. We didn’t know that our baby would need SCBU care and not be able to initially orally feed, so we did use some formula in that interim, but the we went onto exclusively breastfeed and I’ve only just stopped 3 years on. It really is worth it IMO, best of luck to you with it.