More Milk Lactation

https://registration.mytln.care/?practiceId=0018V00002Nr1Sd

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I say this all time. Babies don’t have sleep problems. Our culture has a problem with how babies sleep.

" 'Training'⠀
⠀
Night waking is biologically normal. Night weaning does not ensure no wake ups. Sleep training does NOT ensure a good sleeper.⠀

Sleep is a biological function, it cannot be forced. Just as if someone sat you on the toilet and demanded you p*e right then.⠀

"Just give him rice cereal before bed. He's almost 3 month's, he'll be fine."⠀

"Put them in bed, close the door, don't go back in until morning."⠀

"If they are so upset they throw up, go in and change the sheets. Don't make eye contact or speak to them."⠀

"She's getting too used to being comforted every time she wakes."⠀

"Get out of the house when you put him in his crib, this way you won't hear his cries."⠀

"Let them cry, they're just manipulating you."⠀

Complete. And. Utter. BS.⠀

Not to mention, DANGEROUS.⠀

And many women believe that their baby, that only wakes a few times a night for nourishment and/or comfort, has a problem that needs to be solved.⠀

Waking frequently is a protective measure against SIDS, and also helps to maintain breastfeeding. ⠀

It's expected that they need feeds throughout the night. (Have you ever doubled your weight within a few months before? Or had rapid brain development and growth, so much so that you can't even rest?)⠀

It's unrealistic to expect babies to sleep BETTER than adults. ⠀

Why do we need studies, and facts, and statistics to show how it is or is not damaging. How it is or is not ok to hold your baby to sleep, nurse your baby to sleep, rock your baby to sleep.⠀

What happened to following our instincts? What happened to parenting from and following what you feel is right and good in your heart?⠀

If you need to p*e, do you wake? If you need to adjust the covers, do you wake? Do you wake when you're thirsty, had a bad dream, need to roll over?

Let's normalize normal behaviors.⠀

Babies and children don't have sleep problems.⠀

Society has expectation problems.⠀

Needing comfort isn't a problem that needs to be fixed. It's part of being human."

(Reposted 📸✏️: )

We expect that feedings will be at scheuled intervals and will be the same amount every time. The reality is that some feedings will be big, some small, some just a little drink, some clustered together, some spaced apart. Breastfeeding works best when it is responsive to baby’s cues.

https://19thnews.org/2021/08/company-helping-nursing-parents-tokyo-olympics/

How one company helped parents get 21 gallons of breast milk back from the Tokyo Olympics Milk Stork became a key service for staff who couldn’t bring their nursing babies to Tokyo. Now, it plans to do the same for the Paralympics.

Evacuating with your frozen milk?

✅ Please don't delay evacuating.

✅ Follow all local evacuation advice and make preparations now.

✅ Do not delay your departure because of your milk stash.

Some who are feeding expressed human milk to their infants are concerned about losing precious stores of frozen milk.

The crucial info you need to know right now:

Consider your destination and call ahead to make sure there is freezer space for your stash.

Use or purchase a well-insulated cooler that will hold all your milk, but not so big that it allows lots of air space.

Think about where it will fit in your vehicle – soft-sided may work better. If you have frozen gel packs they can help keep your milk frozen longer but they are not necessary - ice will work.

How to pack your milk in the cooler:

1) Line the bottom of your cooler with newspaper.

2) Place your milk bags on top.

3) Use crumpled newspaper to take up any extra air space – that is the key to keeping your milk frozen. Do not use a large cooler for a small amount of milk - it will thaw faster.

4) Place a layer of newspaper on top of the milk, and place frozen gel packs* or ice blocks on the top of the newspaper (remember, cold air travels down, so they’re better on top than on the bottom.) Pack tightly but not so tight as to stress the cooler.)

5) Keep the cooler closed until you have reached your destination freezer! Consider sealing it duct tape to improve the seal.

You may have heard of using dry ice to ship donor milk – it is not necessary and could be hard to find during an emergency, delaying your departure. If you do have easy access to dry ice, be sure to keep the dry ice completely separate from the milk with extra newspaper to keep it from ripping open the bags.

Here’s a list of items to add to your emergency preparedness shopping/checklist:

__ cooler (not much larger than the amount of milk you need to transport)

__ gel packs

__ today’s newspaper

__ duct tape

Don't delay evacuating because of concerns about your milk stash. The sooner you leave, the sooner you can get to a safe location with electricity and freezer space. Families with young children should evacuate early.

Stay safe!

*Note, you can use frozen water in your cooler, but know that human milk freezes at a lower temperature due to its salt content, and gel packs are a better option than frozen water if you have them. BUT - don't let this slow you down when you have to evacuate - frozen milk packed tight by itself or with block ice in a cooler that isn't opened will last many, many hours.

** What about dry ice? If you have easy access to dry ice, do use it - your frozen stash will last many, many hours. It is not necessary, however, and you will have to take additional precautions to keep the ice from touching your frozen milk bags as they will burst if they make contact.

Power out? More tips from Kelly Mom:

https://kellymom.com/hot-topics/frozen-milk-power-outage/

(This post was modified from larger article written in 2011 to support families evacuating in the face of Tropical Storm Sandy.)

I’m now accepting BCBS of Arizona and Cigna for home visits!

It’s World Breastfeeding Week. For those of you who wanted to breastfeed but couldn’t meet your goals, the work we do is for you ❤️

Why isn’t there a week for people who couldn’t breastfeed?

There is. It’s World Breastfeeding Week.

World breastfeeding week starts tomorrow so I’m posting this today to preemptively make my point, before the flood of critical posts starts.

World Breastfeeding Week is not just for mothers who met their breastfeeding goals. It is also for every mother who ever wanted to breastfeed for a day, a week, a month, a year and wasn’t able to do so.

I know this week is incredibly painful if you weren’t able to meet your breastfeeding goals. I know it feels like the universe is conspiring against you to re-open old wounds and pour salt into them. I’m not going to minimize that. I’m not going to tell you to get over it. I’m not going to tell you that your feelings don’t matter.

You matter. Your feelings matter.

Not only are your feelings valid, they are important. I would argue that those feelings of pain, and loss and grief are one of the most important parts of World Breastfeeding Week.

It is nothing short of cruel that we, as a society, inform mothers of all the benefits of breastfeeding, and then fail to provide adequate help and support for mothers to meet their breastfeeding goals. 80% of mothers who stop breastfeeding in the early days say they would've liked to continue, and felt they could've continued with better support (according to Public Health England). It is nothing short of a travesty that hundreds of thousands of mothers are being let down. Given the very real grief many mothers feel at having to stop breastfeeding, and the fact that the leading cause of death in women in the first 12 months after giving birth is su***de I believe it is fair to say that it is a travesty that is harming, and possibly even killing women.

One of the most damaging results of a lack of breastfeeding support is that mothers are left with no emotional support when breastfeeding doesn't go to plan. There is no one there to give them a hug, a cup of tea, a piece of cake, to reassure them that they have nothing to feel guilty about. To tell them that if they can look themselves in the eye and know they are doing the best they can with their circumstances, then that is all anyone can ever do and it it makes them a truly wonderful mother. No-one is there to tell them to be kind to themselves, to give themselves time to grieve. To tell them that if they want to curl up on the sofa with chocolate and Netflix for a few days they should do that. They are expected to just move on, get over it, it's not like it mattered anyway. So that pain, and that loss, and that grief never truly gets a chance to heal.

And that's exactly why this week is important. Because every mother who ever wanted to breastfeed her baby, for an hour, a week, a month, a year or longer deserves adequate help and support to meet that goal. And for the mothers who don't meet that goal for whatever reason, they have the right to adequate emotional support to heal from that. And I know it hurts this week when you didn't get the support that you deserved, but the aim of this week, the reason we bang our drums, and and get on our soap boxes is so every mother gets the practical end emotional support she deserves. So no other mother ever has to go through this pain.

True story.

I have 1 point. Never had mastitis. How ‘bout you?

Feed on cue.

I feel like I have to make a statement about these wearable, hands-free breast pumps like the Elvie and Willow.

Please do not use these to try to establish or maintain a milk supply. They can be convenient in certain situations, but the motors are just not meant to maintain or establish a supply. They are good in a “something is better than nothing” kind of situation in someone with an already established good supply or for an occasional use, but will not work to initially establish a supply nor to maintain a good supply with regular use.

I felt this hard. Did NOT want to be an ICU nurse anymore after having my child. The hours were too long. The exposure to all kinds of illness and disease was too much. Pumping to keep up supply was so hard. And all I cared about was taking care of my baby, not taking care of everyone else anymore. And that’s just the truth. 🤷‍♀️

Alexis S. shares, "My maternity leave is almost over, and I don't want to go back. I wasn't expecting these feelings at all. We think we can make it work on just my wife's income, but I'm still scared to make this leap. Has anyone else quit their job after having a baby?"
Did you quit your job or change jobs to be home with your baby? How did it work for your family? What helped?
[Image: Photo of a person nursing their baby. Text: I don't want to go back to work.]

Breastfeeding is a learned skill. You are learning, your baby is learning. Sometimes it takes a little bit to get the dance down. The only way to learn how to breastfeed is to breastfeed.

Public service announcement 👇👇👇

Here we are with another article regarding something “alarming” about breastmilk. Here are my thoughts.

I think this speaks more to the effects of our overall lifestyles rather than breastfeeding. The chemicals are ubiquitous and largely unavoidable. It wouldn’t make sense to not breastfeed based on this information. It is well-documented that breastmilk is the best nutrition and immune protection for human babies. There are far more harmful substances in formula than there will ever be in breastmilk and there are far more beneficial ingredients in breastmilk that formula will never be able to have regardless of how good our science gets. Please don’t mistake this for formula shaming. I’m simply saying it wouldn’t be beneficial here to avoid breastmilk as a result of this information.

Other questions I have are what are the contaminants on the testing equipment? Who did the study? Also, the chemicals often come from packaging. What does formula come in? Packaging. Does cow’s milk also contain these chemicals and to what extent? Most formulas are cow’s milk based. So I would consider these things before jumping to a conclusion to avoid breastmilk. As with any medical decision, there is always a weighing of risk/benefit and the benefits of breastmilk far outweighs the potential risks in this context.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/13/pfas-forever-chemicals-breast-milk-us-study?fbclid=IwAR2BUxp5RGupkrrcs3ljofl9Ub2A8AuPBdxNJ4MAwCeepNoCEJ49ZeH4R_g

Study finds alarming levels of ‘forever chemicals’ in US mothers’ breast milk Toxic chemicals known as PFAS found in all 50 samples tested at levels nearly 2,000 times what is considered safe in drinking water

😍😍😍

https://abc7ny.com/10606906/?ex_cid=TA_WABC_FB&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0IwiInOC_idx9bnmYifEB180I6Ee6AMJsagsoAwKsDqpLwiIIOPwo9dvM

New mom and gorilla lovingly hold babies at glass for each other Amazing moments were caught on camera at a Boston zoo, proving motherhood is a bond that crosses species.

Yes!!! All of these. All of these. All of these. All of these.