Learning it the hard way

I have read mountains of articles, books and research about newborns during my pregnancy, but the only thing I didn’t read about was breastfeeding. I did decide to breastfeed my twin, but I thought that this is some thing that happens naturally and that it doesn’t need education. I’ve always seen women taking their breasts out and putting them into their hungry babies’ mouths and the baby nurses happily. That was very far from reality.

After the delivery, which was by a cesarean operation, I discovered that I should’ve learned how to latch my baby well to the breast, how to increase my milk supply, how to avoid soar nipples, and to cut a long story short, I should’ve read about breastfeeding more than anything else concerning newborns.

I know I can’t tell you all that I’ve learned in one article but I will tell you two things: First try to breastfeed your baby, the benefits for both you and your baby outweighs any exhaustion, lost time or any other reason that you may think of to not nurse your baby, The Second is that you should learn how to prepare your breasts for nursing from your last three months of pregnancy, this includes:

• Rubbing your nipples softly with a warm towel to open the holes that get shut from accumulations over the years, and you should do this daily.
• Stimulating your nipple in order to give it a form, so that your child can easily find it.
• Learn good latch and positioning.

The other thing I discovered was that you should never believe what they say about some women having low milk supply, that is all women can produce enough milk for their babies, they just have to do three simple things: eat a balanced diet, drink to thirst, nurse every two to three hours.

Believe me it’s as simple as that, but I learned it the hard way. I believed what they said about low milk supply and that you can’t breastfeed a twin exclusively. And during the first few weeks after their birth I used to nurse one and give the other one formula then switch on the next feeding. I didn’t know then, that by doing this I was telling my body that I don’t need that much of milk, so my body started producing lower quantity than my babies needed. After reading about the topic I realized how wrong I was and I started trying to increase my milk supply again. I read a lot of suggestions and what worked best for me was eat well, drink to thirst and nurse often, but to avoid starving my kids until my milk supply builds up (which takes few weeks), I used a simple system, I nursed them as long as they wanted and if they stayed hungry after that (which reminds me that you should read about hunger cues), I gave them a small bottle of formula so that they don’t feel hungry, but also not to feel full that they’ll refuse to breastfeed the next feeding.

These are the basic rules that I learned and I hope to explore this issue more in the coming days.