Category: Breastfeeding And Safe Infant Feeding Educational Resources

Trouble Breastfeeding? It’s Not Your Fault  

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by Heidi Bitsoli, Sunshine Behavioral Health 

If there’s one thing pregnant women get in spades, it’s advice. From your relatives to your neighbors to your coworkers to strangers in line at the grocery store, everyone has an opinion on how to best care for the child you’re about to birth.

And one of the most common pieces of advice you’re likely to hear is how important breastfeeding is, for both mother and baby. But what all those opinionated folks won’t tell you is how hard it is for some women.

The truth is, that your mental and physical health is just as important as your baby’s. If you have trouble breastfeeding, or simply decide it’s not for you, you are not alone. You also aren’t a failure as a parent if you have difficulties breastfeeding or decide against it.

How Common Are Breastfeeding Difficulties?

Breastfeeding difficulties are extremely common. One study conducted by Nutrients followed mothers who were breastfeeding when they were discharged from the hospital, within 72 hours of delivery. At the time of discharge, 95% of the mothers were breastfeeding exclusively.

After one week, 81% were still breastfeeding exclusively. The majority of these women continued with complementary breastfeeding. At one month, only 73% were exclusively breastfeeding. 19% still provided breast milk complementary feedings, and 7% had transitioned to exclusively formula feeding. Continue reading →

Dear pediatricians, watch your language; infant bonding happens with a present loving parent not the way they are fed

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Dear Pediatrician, 

I am writing this letter to open my heart to all pediatricians. I’m hoping that sharing my story will encourage them to watch their language when talking to parents about infant feeding.

As a parent, we naturally want to make sure our children thrive. We entrust pediatricians to care for our children with unbiased and evidence-based information. We rely so heavily on your assurance that we are doing right by our children. We need the “you’re doing great” or “maybe try doing this instead” to help guide us through the ups and downs of parenting these little ones that did not come with an instruction manual. 

Recently, I was at a pediatrician appointment with my second baby, who happens to be exclusively breastfed. Breastfeeding was easier for me the second time around, and my mental state is in a much better place. 

My pediatrician began to examine him. He starts to cry as he does with everyone that isn’t mommy, daddy, or big sister. She looks at me and laughs and says, “yup, he is definitely in the stranger-danger phase now. And I bet it’s even stronger because he is breastfed. Breastfeeding just creates this unexplainable bond.”

I stood there dumbfounded and in disbelief. My pediatrician knows my daughter was formula-fed, and she knows how emotional I was when switching her to formula. But even putting that aside, she is supposed to be a trained professional and understands that breastfeeding doesn’t create “an unexplainable bond” —bonding happens with an emotionally healthy, loving parent, not by the way a baby is fed. I don’t feel a stronger bond with my son than I do with my daughter. They are both my babies, and I love them both equally and unconditionally. 

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How To Prepare For Supplementing When Breastfeeding Your Baby In The Hospital

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Mothers who experienced delayed onset of milk production or experienced low milk supply with their first baby often contact us for support to try breastfeeding again. They typically have anticipatory anxiety because they have lost trust in their lactation professionals and hospital staff and are unwilling to attempt breastfeeding again without supplementation. They want to know how to supplement their baby until their milk supply becomes sufficient to feed them safely while providing proper breastfeeding stimulation for optimal milk production.

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What Kind Of Water Is Safe For Mixing Formula Powder For My Baby?

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Written By: Jody Segrave-Daly, MS, RN, IBCLC

Great question! Educational resources that parents have access to often give them mixed messages about safe formula preparation.  To answer the many questions we receive, we developed an up-to-date evidence-based resource guide for parents about safe formula feeding. We start with water sources available to parents in the United States, specifically. 

Public Water

The United States has one of the safest public drinking water facilities in the world, and it is strictly regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency known as the EPA. Your community’s public water system is routinely tested for safe consumption. The EPA sets legal limits on over 90 contaminants in drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Drinking Water Hotline is  1-800-426-4791.

Private Well Water

It is estimated that more than 13 million households rely on private wells for drinking water in the United States. According to the EPA, private well owners are responsible for the safety of their water. This website educates well owners on wells, groundwater, and information on protecting their health.   Continue reading →

Is My Baby’s Weight Loss Normal Or Excessive?

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The Newborn Weight Loss Tool can provide an answer.

Parents are taught that it’s normal for babies to lose 7–10% of their body weight in the first few days after birth, but is this true? Well, that depends. According to the AAP, a baby who loses more than 7% of his body weight may be losing excessive weight and requires a comprehensive lactation evaluation to rule out delayed onset of copious milk production, primary lactation failure, and/or infant oral anomalies that prevent adequate colostrum/milk transfer.

From the American Academy of Pediatrics HealthyChildren.org website. Breastfed newborns should lose no more than 7 percent of birth weight in the first few days after birth before starting to gain weight again. (Accessed July 16, 2020)

Weight loss has typically been assessed using simple percentages, but now there is a much more precise and accurate way to track excessive weight loss in newborns and many hospitals, pediatricians, and lactation consultants are adopting this method for greater accuracy in making clinical recommendations. The Newborn Weight Tool, or NEWT, is an online tool, the first of its kind, to help pediatricians determine whether exclusively breastfed newborns have lost too much weight in the first days of life. The tool was developed at Penn State College of Medicine through research conducted jointly with University of California, San Francisco. It was developed using a research sample of hourly birth weights from more than 100,000 breastfed newborns. For a quick synopsis of this tool from the lead investigator and one of developers of the tool, Dr. Ian Paul, watch the video below.

Source: Penn State Health News

In this video, Dr. Ian Paul, professor of pediatrics and public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine and pediatrician at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital, talks about how NEWT fills an important void.  Determining whether an exclusively breastfed newborn is losing excessive weight is important because higher weight loss almost always reflects suboptimal milk intake. It is also associated with increased risk of medical complications such as low blood sugar, jaundice, and dehydration, which can result in the need for medical interventions and future health and developmental problems. This weight-loss tool shows that how quickly babies lose weight is just as important as how much they lose.

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