nipple comes into contact with her soft palate, which is at the back of the roof of her mouth.
When your baby’s soft palate is stimulated, she instinctively starts to move her jaws so that she can breastfeed. If your nipple is not far enough in, it makes contact instead with your baby’s hard palate; peek in her mouth and you will see ridges. Your nipple would soon get sore pressed into that part of your baby’s mouth.
As with bottle-feeding, someone should be there to help you the first few times you try to feed your baby, but these are the general principles:
Before you begin, get comfy. You could be sitting in the same position for quite a while! It’s easier in the beginning to sit upright, so choose a chair which will support you sitting upright rather than slouching back, as this tends to pull your breast out of your baby’s mouth. You might need cushions or pillows to help you get upright.
Your feet should reach the floor so that your knees are level or even slightly raised, to give your baby a nice cosy lap. A small stool or some telephone directories under your feet may help.
If your breasts are high then you might find a pillow or even two useful to rest your arms on when bringing your baby level with your breasts. It’s easier to get your baby latched on first, and then tuck the pillows under your arms, otherwise the pillows can get between the two of you when you are trying to get started.
The most common position for holding a baby is across your tummy, but you could hold her ‘underarm’, especially if she’s small, or if you’ve had a caesarean section and you need to protect your tummy. You will need to have several cushions between you and the chair back if feeding underarm, so your baby can stretch out without pushing herself off your breast. If she’s across your tummy, support her head on your forearm (not the crook of your arm).
DID YOU KNOW? Who is in control of feeding and appetite? It depends whether your baby is breastfed or bottle-fed.
With a bottle, you fill it up and you can watch it empty. If you’re breastfeeding, you can’t tell how much your baby has had to eat and so you have to rely on your baby’s signals to work out when she has had enough.
The significance of this is that breastfeeding babies are more in control of their feeds, and their mothers need to tune in to their needs. Researchers have found that bottle-feeding mothers are more likely to override cues, ignoring signals which tell them that their baby has had enough to eat.1
Babies, whether breastfed or bottle-fed, do not suck continuously, but have frequent breaks to be winded or have nappies changed and so on. One researcher filmed mothers feeding their babies to see who initiated these breaks, and found that it’s the mother who controls the breaks for bottle-fed babies, while pauses in breastfeeding are controlled by the baby.2
Top Tips for Correct Positioning at the Breast
• Support your baby’s spine in line. Hold her so her back and shoulders are straight. Avoid holding the back of her head, which would push her chin towards her chest, making it difficult for her to open her mouth wide. Also, most babies don’t like having their heads held.
• Hold your baby so you are both tummy to tummy. She will not be able to feed well if she has to turn her head sideways.
• Align your baby’s head so she’s nose to nipple. Don’t hold her mouth to your nipple, as would seem logical, because once she’s on your breast, her chin would be pushed towards her chest and her throat would close, making swallowing difficult and slow. Your nipple needs to be in contact with the roof of her mouth for her to feed properly, and needs to be far enough back to avoid contact with her hard palate – that bony ridge at the front of her mouth, which would rub against and hurt your nipple.
• Wait for the gape. Wait until her mouth is really wide open – imagine she’s about to bite on an apple – and then draw her swiftly onto your breast.
• Chin in. Her chin will contact your breast first, digging well in, and leaving her nose clear.
My second child, Eva, is 12 weeks old and all afternoon she wants to be rocked and carried; it’s the only way to calm her down. I wish I had some magic advice to offer, but I don’t. All I can say is, if you have family or friends close by who are willing to come and pace the floor rocking your baby, ask them. I leave her with my mum while I go food shopping. It gets me out of the house for an hour and gives me a break at least from the crying.
– Stephanie, mother of Summer and Eva
~ Times Change ~ Answer – 1922 ~
From Charis Ursula Frankenburg, Common Sense in the Nursery (reprinted 1934, 1954), cited in Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Child-care From Locke to Spock (Jonathan Cape, 1983)
~ Times change – does the advice stay the same? ~
Breastmilk is poured forth from an exuberant overflowing Urn, by a bountiful hand, that never provides sparingly. Thus Nature, if she be not interrupted, will do the whole business perfectly well.
Long ago, babies were carried around all the time and fed whenever they seemed hungry. This century, lots of feeding regimes have come and gone, so now many mothers feel completely confused about what babies want or need. Add to this conflicting advice from mothers, grandmothers, aunts and possibly even midwives, GPs and health visitors, and it’s no wonder women feel a bit lost as to what’s best.
For instance, a generation ago mothers were told to feed babies for 20 minutes only, every four hours. Although we now know that this led to a downturn in breastfeeding rates, many books still try to suggest new time limits, new regimes for breastfeeding.
The advice is always well meant; the ‘expert’ hopes to make life for a new mother easier by imposing routines on baby from day one. For some mothers and babies, this will work, but for others feeding won’t work like this, the baby will be unhappy, he may not gain weight, and breastfeeding will eventually fail.
One of the reasons that bottle-feeding can seem attractive is that mothers know exactly what they are giving their babies and when. Breastfeeding can seem a bit of an inexact science in comparison. With bottle-feeding, it is perfectly possible to schedule feeds from birth.
Bottle-feeding
If you have decided to bottle-feed your baby, you will find the question of how much and how often relatively easy, as it is all printed on the side of the tin. You and your baby may be happy to feed according to a schedule – so many ounces at certain times of the day; however, some babies will not like feeding like this, and so it’s OK to bottle-feed on demand – just like breastfeeding. You need to have some way of keeping a record of exactly how much your baby takes at each feed, so that you can ensure he is getting all he needs in any 24 hour period.
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