Nursing Your Kids

The Mother’s Milk Bank of New England won the contest at Ideablob!

Tanya at the Motherwear breastfeeding blog writes:

The Mothers Milk Bank of New England won $10,000 in the Ideablob contest! The official announcement was made today at an event in Boston.

Thank you many times over to everyone who voted, who encouraged friends and family to vote, who blogged about it, and who wished us luck! You made a big difference for the milk bank and for families in our region.

The milk bank plans to open this May. Here’s some info from their site about the donation process.

Mothers who have more milk than they need and want to donate have to pass the health requirements, including a written medical history, notes from the mothers’ and babies’ doctors, and a blood test to ensure neither are carrying a communicable disease. Things that could disqualify a mom from being eligible to donate include women who drink more than 2 ounces of alcohol a day regularly and those who use tobacco products. A mom must be willing to donate at least 100 ounces of milk and her baby needs to be less than a year old. Mothers who choose to donate pump their milk at home and store it in the freezer. When they are ready to give the milk, they put it in a special cooler and ship it frozen overnight to the milk bank so it doesn’t spoil. Bar-Yam said at the bank the milk is thawed, tested, pasteurized, refrozen and shipped to the babies who need it, mostly premature and hospitalized.

I think I’m now officially the last breastfeeding blogger to post this, but just in case you haven’t seen it, I’m posting it again.

Breast milk contains stem cells

“The point is that many mothers see milks as identical – formula milk and breast milk look the same so they must be the same. But we know now that they are quite different and a lot of the effects of breast milk versus formula don’t become apparent for decades. Formula companies have focussed on matching breast milk’s nutritional qualities but formula can never provide the developmental guidance.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Nursing an infant has a learning curve. Obviously I’ve only ever nursed one so far, but I’m assuming that I’ll still have several (or more) weeks where nursing #2 has it’s challenged. There are struggles with latch, the questions of where to put the oh-so-necessary nursing pads, the trouble to find a comfortable position, and of course the struggle of how to nurse a floppy infant discreetly. Once you and your baby get used to each other it’s easy to nurse in a variety of places and a variety of positions and have most people assume you’re just holding your sleeping baby. (Unless your baby is a noisy, active eater. I can’t help you with that one.) But until then it’s tough, especially for a first time mom who’s nervous to begin with.

Do you really need shirts specially made for breastfeeding? No, like nursing bras you don’t need them, but they certainly do make things easier when they’re well made. When Sam was first born I had a small selection of nursing bras and a few ill-fitting nursing camisoles. The bras made nursing in public- and public is relative when you’re swamped with visitors those first few weeks- much easier, but it still left the question of exposing the floppy, post partum skin around my waist when I lifted my shirt. The ill-fitting nursing camisoles solved the problem of the exposed skin around my waist, but they were uncomfortable because they didn’t fit well and exposed a whole lot of flesh up top when they were unsnapped.

The moment when I knew it was necessary to buy something well-made was when I realized I had to bring my 6-week-old to a wedding. I was in the height of overproduction and Sam was nursing every two hours or less. The dress I was planning on wearing to the wedding (which I was in!) didn’t fit very well and would have required me to take it off to feed Sam. I knew there was no way I’d ever be able to relax unless I got something appropriate to wear. I went to my local upscale maternity store and bought a simple black skirt and matching top. Since all of the bridesmaids were wearing black dresses that didn’t match anyway, I blended right in with the bridal party and got to enjoy myself at my best friend’s wedding.

Eventually I decided to bite the bullet and just buy a few nice, nursing tops for the other occasions when we’d be out and I wanted a combination of subtlety and fashion. They really made all of the difference in my comfort level. I got a few tops from Japanese Weekend and a Glamourmom tank which solved all of the exposure problems of the ill-fitting camisoles. The JW tops were pricy, but they made nursing out and about so, so easy. I think that this time I’ll try to buy one more Glamourmom tank and another nursing top. I may even treat myself to a bathing suit with easy breastfeeding access. (need any info on sunscreen?)

It’s such a relief that there are so many places to buy stylish clothes that make breastfeeding easy. Some of my favorites are the two I linked to above, Motherwear, and the new line by Gap.

And if I bring the new baby to either of the weddings we attend this summer I may just have to buy this dress.

I started getting sick on Superbowl Sunday. We were on our way to a party and I could feel my head begin to fog over. Since Sam was with us we didn’t stay at the party too long, but by the time we got home I was officially sick.

Monday morning I was so foggy I could barely function. Sam was fine and I knew I’d never survive without him taking a nap so I took him out to the children’s museum for the morning, being careful to sanitize my hands at every sanitizing station and making sure to cough into my sleeve so as not to infect the other children. By the end of our two-hour visit I needed a nap more than Sam did. By evening I was running a fever.

My mother-in-law came over Tuesday morning so I could take a nap, but I still had a slight fever by evening and Sam had gotten my cough and stuffy nose. By Wednesday morning, after a mostly sleepless night for the entire family, Sam had a fever and was as miserable as I was.

I’m not usually a baby when I’m sick. I don’t whine about it and I’ll generally just pop some ibuprofen and get on with my life. Most of my illnesses just last a few days anyway. But being sick when you’re pregnant is tough. And being sick when you have to take care of a sick toddler is tougher. Aside from the fact that Sam’s been waking at night whether he’s sick or not, I’ve been waking up several times a night because I’m pregnant. Last night I was in bed with Sam by 9 after he’d woken up miserable in his own bed. By 7 this morning I’d been out of bed half a dozen times to use the bathroom and Sam in his restless, feverish state had woken me up another half a dozen times.

The thought of doing this with two kids is terrifying.

On a lighter note, here’s a recipe for chicken noodle soup and a picture from the always hilarious Lol cats.

ABC News reported on phthalates in baby products. Like reports on BPA, I find this alarming.

Some environmental medicine experts worry that parents using any one of dozens of baby products could be exposing their children to chemicals that could hurt their reproductive ability later on in life.

I keep going back and forth between using expensive, all-natural products for Sam’s bath and deciding I can’t spend $11 on a small bottle of bubble bath. But I think I’m going to have to suck it up and shell out the big bucks or figure out how to make something natural and effective myself.

In the comments of my post about pumping exclusively Katharine wrote, Exclusive pumping because you don’t want to sit still and breastfeed sounds mechanical and icky to me.

Caro followed up by writing, Katharine, I bet that one woman’s relaxing is another woman’s icky.

These are both excellent points. When I first read about exclusive pumping (note: for some reason I can’t help but write pumpkin instead of pumping-and yes I just corrected that- every single freaking time I write it) I assumed women did it because they had to. It never occurred to me that someone who didn’t want to physically nurse their baby would actually go to all of the trouble of pumping. And pumpking (see!!!) is trouble. There’s equipment to wash, there’s milk to store, parts to assemble and disassemble, and then there’s the actual part where you have to hope the letdown reflex will kick in and hope you’re pumping enough. When you’re pumpking (ugh, I can’t make it stop- I may have to switch to the verb expressing) exclusively every ounce counts much more than if you’re just expressing occasionally.

It seems strange to me that someone (once all latch problems are under control) would rather hook up to a machine than hook up to a baby, especially for those middle of the night feedings. But strange to me isn’t necessarily strange to someone else. Like caro said, one woman’s relaxing is another woman’s icky.

A recent article in Babble about expressing exclusively brought some interesting points.

“I don’t think there’s any question” breast milk is superior to formula, said Dr. Ruth Lawrence, a professor of pediatrics and expert on breastfeeding at the University of Rochester. “I would opt for breast milk in a bottle rather than no breast milk at all.”

Still, she said, drinking pumped breast milk from a bottle differs considerably from nursing. “Babies who suckle at the breast — that’s the physiological way to feed. The baby doesn’t get the same kind of activity — tongue, mouth, swallow — when it is feeding from the bottle.” And, she added, “it’s been shown that the die is cast for obesity in the first year of life, and we tend to overfeed babies when we bottle feed them.”

For the two months I was expressing for Sam I remember that everyone who tried to bottle feed him, especially his grandmothers, tried to insist that he finish what was in the bottle whether he wanted it or not. I’m sure that this would have been the case whether it was formula or breastmilk, but that desire to see a baby finish a bottle is completely different than letting a baby nurse until he or she is finished. I’m sure that bottle fed babies are over fed, which is why they created a growth chart for breastfed babies. Even so, I don’t know that this is the best point for a breastfeeding advocate to make. So many women are turned off by experiences with pushy and rude lactation consultants that this point, that you’re basically setting your kid up for obesity by bottle feeding them isn’t going to make them feel any better about their decision to breastfeed, no matter what form the breastfeeding takes.

The balance of foremilk and hindmilk that helps nursing babies first satisfy their hunger, then feel full is missing when pumped milk mixes in a bottle. And psychologically there can be more pressure to finish a bottle when expressed breast milk represents so much work for the mother.

Yes! They call it liquid gold. It’s painful to see it go to waste.

Dr. Lawrence worries that most women aren’t getting the proper support when they set out to nurse their babies, and that some women find the idea so distasteful they don’t try. “Some women do it because they can’t envision the baby suckling at their breast. I suspect it has to do with our whole modern attitude about the breast. It’s become such a sex object.”

Wanting to physically separate yourself from your baby because you view your breasts as sex objects, not a temporary source of nourishment, is something that I find icky. Yes, breasts are sexual, but the inability to put that aside for the brief time period that a child needs them for food just seems cold to me.

All the women I spoke with would agree on one thing: mothers who wish to breastfeed would benefit from better support and information. Inconsistent, inconsiderate nurses and lactation consultants, doctors who either push formula or ignore mothers’ requests for help with nursing, and rigid hospital policies regarding babies’ weight need to change. As Dr. Lawrence points out, babies have been losing weight in the days after birth since the beginning of the human race: it’s a feature, not a bug. By fetishing weights and measures, the modern healthcare establishment borrows from the formula industry while paying lip service to breastfeeding — a recipe of mixed messages that sets mothers up to fail.

It’s hard to feel confident in your decision to breastfeed when your baby just keeps losing weight. At his first appointment with his pro-breastfeeding pediatrician, when Sam had lost more than 10% of his birth weight and my milk had yet to come in, he was weighed both before and after I nursed him. He actually LOST weight in between. I felt like a failure. When his pediatrician recommended supplementing with formula with a dropper until my milk came in I felt like more of a failure. But I’d read enough to know that it was normal and I continued to nurse him every two hours whether he seemed interested or not. A meeting with a good lactation consultant, a kind lactation consultant who was patient and thorough and sweet to me and my baby helped ease my mind two days later. And by then my milk had come in, only I didn’t really know it because Sam was nursing so often I didn’t really become engorged. I could have been set up to fail just as easily as thousands of other women who give up nursing in the first few days. But I wasn’t. I was well-informed and had a good support system including a pediatrician who reminded me for the entire first year of his life that breastfed babies just don’t weigh as much as formula fed babies and that I shouldn’t put too much stock into the percentile charts as long as Sam was healthy and growing.

Whatever the reason for expressing milk instead of nursing, I still think it’s a worthwhile pursuit. And while I don’t necessarily understand the women who prefer expressing for sexual reasons, or just don’t feel like sitting down with a baby who nurses on and off all day long, I still think they’ve made a good choice. Breastmilk is best.

A while back I wrote about the episode of Family Guy where Lois weans Stewie. I couldn’t find a clip (copyright laws be damned!) but Tanya at the Motherwear blog just posted one today!

Watch and enjoy.

On my baby message board a number of women have written about exclusively pumping for their babies. The majority of these women had to pump instead of give milk “from the tap” because their babies were unable to latch correctly. Some of the babies couldn’t latch for medical reasons, either they were premature or they had cleft palate. Other mothers just had bad experiences with lactation consultants who were unwilling to listen and unable to help. A few women on the board who are first time mothers-to-be have expressed interest in pumping exclusively for their children because they don’t want to breastfeed, yet can’t deny the health benefits. One woman just said she doesn’t have the personality to breastfeed- her baby was a lazy eater who would consistently fall asleep at the breast. She couldn’t handle just sitting there and pumped to avoid the stress relaxing brought on.

I have mixed feelings about exclusively pumping. The idea of it makes me incredibly jealous. Women who pump can go out and leave their babies in the care of their husbands, family, friends, or other caretakers for more than an hour or two. They can have a break when they feel overwhelmed, and trust that their babies will eat. At the same time, these women have to get up in the middle of the night and attach themselves to a machine. They can’t just drag their babies along when they have a day’s worth of errands to run, they have to schedule time to pump or run the risk of their supply dropping.

When I weigh the advantages and disadvantages to both I can’t help but think that mothers who pump exclusively are making the bigger sacrifice. Pumping, which is something I admittedly did on a very limited basis, seems like so much more work to me. It’s time consuming, yes, but there’s something so luxuriously lazy about just sitting down to nurse for hours every day.

I don’t really have any answers or profound thoughts on the matter. It’s just something I’ve been mulling over.

I saw this article about an office that’s so breastfeeding friendly that nursing mothers are allowed to bring their child to work. Sure, it’s a WIC office, so employees are setting a good example for their clients at the same time, but even so, I’m impressed. Very impressed. I hope that more workplaces take notice and make their policies more flexible.

Blest be the sling that binds
Moms bond with their babies as they wear them, even to the job

She dreads the day when the sling will eventually have to be retired.

The Mother’s Milk Bank of New England, which I posted about last week, is a finalist in a contest to win $10,000 for startup funds through Ideablob.

The Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England is a newly formed non-profit milk bank serving babies, hospitals, and families throughout New England. The Milk Bank will provide screened and pasteurized breastmilk to premature and critically ill babies, primarily in neonatal intensive care units. This milk will be donated by volunteer mothers in our region. For sick and premature babies, breastmilk can mean the difference between life and death, and a short or long hospital stay. Studies have shown that premature babies who receive banked milk are far less likely to suffer life-threatening complications and have much faster recovery rates.

Please go to the site and vote for this worthwhile cause. It requires registration, but it’s quick and painless and mother’s milk can save lives.

I haven’t gotten a single comment on this site since December. I didn’t really think too much of it at first, but I was starting to feel kind of down about it. I mean, I know that breastfeeding is sort of a niche market, and I’m not a huge commenter on other sites which doesn’t really encourage comments here. But a month without comments? Not even one?

Anyway, I checked my spam filter and sure enough every legitimate comment was stuck with comments from “people” named Halo and Neo encouraging me to pierce delicate parts of my anatomy. My eyes began to bleed after the third page of spam comments so I gave up trying to rescue comments from the abyss and just deleted everything. So if you’ve commented recently and it hasn’t shown up I apologize. I’ll try and do better!

It’s not just me. Comments are funky all over 451 press.

According to various reports, Salma Hayek, executive producer Ugly Betty has become a milk machine since the birth of her daughter Valentina in September. Rumor has it she’s pumping around the clock to help lose some of the baby weight.

A friend of the actress said: “Salma has been pumping and freezing endless amounts of breast milk. When she’s not feeding Valentina, she’s hooked up to an industrial-size breast pump.”

“The best way of losing weight is to work toward a gradual weight loss, eat when you’re hungry, and make sure you get enough fluids. It’s the best way of losing weight easily and safely!”

I hope this is just rumor. I’m all for breastfeeding, but I’ve got to agree with the lactation consultant. Breastfeeding isn’t just for weight loss and it’s important for mom to stay healthy too. The weight will come off when your body is ready to let it go. Rushing it will just make you feel run down.

In the comments of Bryan’s post that described zinc deficiencies as something that the “breast is best” people are trying to hide, Sarah wrote:

Zinc isn’t the only thing; I saw on GMA that Vitamin D is also not included in breastmilk and supplementing is encouraged. That’s also why, if a child has jaundice at home, they recommend supplementing with formula and then returning to the breast.

This isn’t entirely accurate. From Kellymom:

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society recommend vitamin D supplementation for all infants and children to ensure that the small percentage of infants/children who need additional vitamin D do not become deficient.

World Health Organization information [Butte 2002, p. 29 states,
"...although there is abundant evidence suggesting that breastfed infants often receive less vitamin D than is required, most studies fail to find rickets in breastfed infants less than 6 months of age... infants who are exclusively or predominantly breastfed for 6 months or longer can be at an increased risk of rickets if their mothers are at risk of vitamin D deficiency, and the infants receive limited sun exposure and no vitamin D supplements."

In addition, gastrointestinal supplements are not the most easily absorbed form of Vitamin D. Per "Infant feeding: the physiological basis" [WHO, 1991] by James Akre,
“…it is now understood that the optimal route for vitamin D ingestion in humans is not the gastrointestinal tract, which may permit toxic amounts to be absorbed. Rather, the skin is the human organ designed, in the presence of sunlight, both to manufacture vitamin D in potentially vast quantities and to prevent the absorption of more than the body can safely use and store.”

As for jaundice, it’s a condition that occurs in more than half of all newborns. It’s caused by elevated bilirubin levels and in most cases it’s nothing to worry about.

From the AAP:
Q: Does breastfeeding affect jaundice?
A: Jaundice is more common in babies who are breastfed than babies who are formula-fed, but this occurs mainly in infants who are not nursing well. If you are breastfeeding, you should nurse your baby at least 8 to 12 times a day for the first few days. This will help you produce enough milk and will help to keep the baby’s bilirubin level down. If you are having trouble breastfeeding, ask your baby’s doctor or nurse or a lactation specialist for help. Breast milk is the ideal food for your baby.

And from Kellymom: I won’t quote the whole thing since you can go to the site and read it yourself, but I will quote the parts that stress that breastfeeding does not usually need to be discontinued because of jaundice and that formula feeding is far from being the first approach if baby isn’t feeding well.

Breastmilk jaundice is normal. Rarely, if ever, does breastfeeding need to be discontinued even for a short time. Only very occasionally is any treatment, such as phototherapy, necessary. There is not one bit of evidence that this jaundice causes any problem at all for the baby. Breastfeeding should not be discontinued “in order to make a diagnosis”. If the baby is truly doing well on breast only, there is no reason, none, to stop breastfeeding or supplement with a lactation aid, for that matter.

…the first approach to not-enough-breastmilk jaundice is not to take the baby off the breast or to give bottles . If the baby is nursing well, more frequent feedings may be enough to bring the bilirubin down more quickly, though, in fact, nothing needs be done. If the baby is nursing poorly, helping the baby latch on better may allow him to nurse more effectively and thus receive more milk.

Again, there are cases when jaundice is a problem and can be serious. But these cases are out of the ordinary and most breastfeeding mothers just need to nurse often and regularly to treat it.

Breastfeeding is not harmful. I think it’s dangerous to suggest that breastfeeding somehow deprives babies of essential vitamins and minerals. It doesn’t. Breastmilk is the perfect food. Formula is a substitute that is chemically engineered to mimic breastmilk. Formula companies add things to their formulas so it will be more like breast milk. Don’t let headlines and partial information dissuade you from feeding your baby the best food possible.

Last week Bryan posted the following:

Also, I have read a few article [sic] that state some essential minerals can not be passed through the breast. They suggest supplements for both mom and baby. Zinc is the big one I have found. Now, why don’t the “Breast is best” sites ever mention the need to supplement?

I wonder what else they are hiding…

While the information in Bryan’s post is correct, what he’s taken from it doesn’t seem to be. Based on his statement that the “breast is best” people are hiding things, it seems he believes breastfed babies are often deprived of zinc. This just isn’t true. Though it’s true that maternal zinc deficiency can be a problem, zinc deficiencies are extremely rare. There’s usually no need for additional supplementation after solids are started.

Most breastfed babies begin eating solid foods after six to eight months of age. Some breastfed babies begin solid foods sooner. The website he quotes states that human milk doesn’t provide the recommended amounts of zinc for older infants between the ages of 7 months and 12 months so breast-fed infants of this age should also consume age-appropriate foods…

In other words, breast milk provides enough zinc for up to 7 months of age. Kellymom, the breastfeeding authority on the web states that

Healthy full-term breastfed babies do not need additional zinc past what they get from breastmilk and (after 6-8 months) from complementary foods. Good sources of zinc include meat (especially red meat) and yogurt. Signs of a mild zinc deficiency include: lessened appetite, lowered immune function, limited activity, growth faltering. Low birth weight, small for gestational age and premature infants are at risk for zinc deficiency.

It doesn’t appear from either source that the majority of infants are suffering from a lack of zinc so I’m not entirely sure what he thinks the breastfeeding community is hiding. Doctors recommend that nursing mothers continue to take a prenatal vitamin for additional supplementation. But according the research on Kellymom:

If you eat a reasonably-well balanced diet, vitamin supplements are not considered necessary for breastfeeding mothers.

* Mothers who smoke cigarettes may benefit from additional iodine.

So if your diet is reasonably healthy and you have no known vitamin or mineral deficiencies, rest easy. Your breastfed baby should be fine.

Stonyfield yogurt, makers of the popular Yo Baby line, is releasing a new kind of yogurt for pregnant and breastfeeding mommies called, you guessed it, Yo Mommy. Their baby yogurt, in all of its full fat, sugary, organic glory is delicious. One can only hope that their new “mommy” yogurt is just as good.

Here’s their press release:

(PRLog.Org) – Jan 18, 2008 – Londonderry, NH – Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt-maker, announces YoMommy, the first yogurt created to address the specific nutritional needs of pregnant, nursing and new moms, and their growing babies.

YoMommy comes in 4-ounce four-packs at a suggested retail price of $2.99. Flavors include Strawberry and Peach, and Blueberry and Raspberry. YoMommy is now available nationwide in natural food stores and in select grocery stores.

While I don’t necessarily agree that, “Enjoying Stonyfield Farm’s YoMommy, a healthy and delicious yogurt from a brand name that you trust, is the simplest way to nourish yourself, which will go a long way to taking care of your baby as well.” really is the “simplest” way to eat well, I know that a few extra vitamins, minerals, DHA and probriotic cultures won’t hurt, especially if you, like me, spent the first trimester eating mostly crackers and french fries.