Jenny Bailey of Mesa had an effortless, rewarding and painless breastfeeding experience with her first child so she had no reason to expect anything different with her second. She’d heard about breastfeeding classes and lactation consultants but didn’t see the need. “Breastfeeding is supposed to be a natural thing,” she remembers thinking.
But Bailey learned a lesson with her second baby: Breastfeeding doesn’t come naturally to every mother and baby. She had latching problems with her second child, which led to painful engorgement. “All I knew then was that it hurt,” she says. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
That experience inspired Bailey to help other women avoid breastfeeding difficulties. So she created Every Mother & Child, a Mesa shop offering breastfeeding supplies and educational support.
Being prepared for breastfeeding is mostly about learning what is “normal” and what is not, says lactation consultant Ruth Gruen, IBCLC, of Surprise. That way, when trouble arises, a brief phone conversation with an expert may be enough to resolve the problem.
It is natural to experience a sense of tugging and perhaps a bit of soreness during the first weeks but breastfeeding should not be painful, Gruen says. Pain may indicate problems with the baby’s latch onto the breast.
While it’s impossible to know for sure which moms will struggle with breastfeeding, Gruen says some factors—like difficulty breastfeeding a previous child—may indicate the need to seek professional help.
Physical conditions that may affect breastfeeding include: flat or short nipples, tubular-shaped breasts, significantly uneven breasts or inverted nipples. (You can assess this by compressing the areola tissue with the thumb and index finger.) “If the nipple goes in instead of popping out, consult with a lactation consultant,” Gruen recommends. “You may need to begin wearing breast shells [which are worn inside a bra to help draw nipples out] before the baby comes and be prepared to [use a] pump to pull the nipple out [before each breastfeeding session].”
Gruen says the strongest recommendation she makes to parents is to avoid bottle feeding their infant during the first days after birth. “It doesn’t always cause problems but you don’t know if it will interfere or not until it’s too late,” she says. There are other ways of supplementing—such as syringe feeding or finger feeding (a tube attached to a bottle is taped to the parent’s finger for feeding)—if that becomes necessary.
Scheduled feeding is also a “no-no” during the first few weeks, Gruen says. The baby is only getting a couple of tablespoons worth of colostrum (a thick, yellowish, nutrient-rich milk produced before mom’s milk supply comes in) per feeding during those first days, so overfeeding is impossible and frequent nursing is necessary to bring in a full milk supply.
“My best advice is just to take a really good breastfeeding class and read up as much as you can or call a good lactation consultant,” says Gruen. “It’s much easier to prevent breastfeeding problems than it is to fix them after the fact. I would much rather spend 10 minutes on the phone with a mother before her baby comes than speak to her a couple of weeks later, crying on the phone about how breastfeeding isn’t working out.”
Breastfeeding resources
Links to local and national support, supplies, breastfeeding consultants and more. RAK Resources here.
