Starting Breast Feeding

     My daughter recently told me a horror story about a friend of hers who was trying to initiate breastfeeding with her newborn. She didn’t have milk right away, but her baby cried and acted hungry all the time.  She was told by the hospital staff not to give formula and to keep trying to feed the screaming infant. She was awake for two days getting more frustrated and fatigued all the time. She felt like a failure and finally just gave up and gave the baby formula and swore she would never try to breastfeed again. 

     New moms who want to breast feed need to know some basic facts. On average, most newborns are feeding well at about three days of life. On average, most moms start to feel their breast milk come in on about the third day, too. Nature knows that both mom and baby need some rest after labor and delivery, so babies are born fed – they have excess water and nutrition at birth so that everyone can relax and gradually get breastfeeding started.

     But everything in biology is on a bell-shaped curve which means that some babies will be hungry on the first day and some babies won’t be really hungry until the fourth day. Some moms will have their breast milk come in on the first day and other moms won’t get good milk production until the fourth day. Of course, that means that sometimes the hungry baby will be matched with the late mom and the late baby will be matched with the early mom.

     New moms should always try to breastfeed when their infant gives them the clues that they are hungry. If the small amount of breast milk mom has at first satisfies the baby, there is no problem. The baby will gradually get hungrier with each feeding, mom will gradually make more milk and breastfeeding will move ahead naturally.

     But if it is clear that the baby is still hungry after a reasonable amount of time breastfeeding or if the infant keeps screaming because he isn’t getting enough, it is time to supplement with formula. When the infant eats enough, he will fall asleep for about 3 hours and when he wakes up, he’ll be hungry again and mom can try breastfeeding again.

      New moms are often threatened with horrible outcomes to keep them from supplementing – “He’ll never breast feed well”; “He’ll only want formula”. Thankfully, there was a recent study published in the June, 2013 issue of Pediatrics which dispels these threats. They looked at infants who were given supplemental formula in the first week of life and they found that at 3 months of age, 79% of the infants given formula supplementation were breastfeeding exclusively. Interestingly, only 42% of the moms and infants who were denied supplemental formula were exclusively breastfeeding at 3 months.

     It’s simple: if your infant is hungry, feed him. If you have enough breast milk, fine. If not, give him some formula and try the breastfeeding again the next feeding. You’ll both sleep better.