After two entries in which we have explained six of the phrases we should not say to a mother breastfeeding her baby (phrases 1 to 3 and phrases 4 to 6) today we end the series of entries talking about the remaining four.
With these ten sentences We have tried to explain what you should not say, or if you are nursing mothers, what phrases you should ignore when they are probably told. They are not all, because myths and meaningless phrases are said many more, but I think they are the most common of those that are said to recent mothers. We go there with the remaining ones.
7. If you are going back to work, shouldn't you feed other people?
As you can see, he insists again and again on getting the child to take a bottle anyway. If it is not because it seems that he is hungry, so that the mother may rest, so that he does not rest and do things at home, so that the father also enjoys the pleasure of feeding him, so that he does not ask so often or to sleep more hours, it is so that in a few weeks or months, when the mother goes to work, another person can feed her.
They tell you to get used to the bottle and artificial milk for when the baby is going to run a few hours without his mother. But why move forward? There are mothers who will surely start working at the end of the leave, there are mothers who finally find a solution and postpone the moment and there are mothers who do not return to work until a few months later (or years, as in the case of my wife, who was going to start at four months and the thing has been extended eight years).
Returning to work is not synonymous (should not be) to stop breastfeeding. Many women can combine breastfeeding and work, and while they are not able to leave extracted milk, or alternatives can be sought when she is not. Also, if you have already started with food, there is no need to bottle feed.
Therefore, giving a bottle, or several, to a baby to get used to is getting too far. It would be something like leaving the baby with the grandmother for a while every day, even if she cries, because after four months she will have to stay with her, even if she cries (what do you want to anticipate suffering). The time will come and, depending on the circumstances, the appropriate decisions will be taken.
In addition, and above all, the bottles are not sucked just like the mother's breast. Yes it is true that now they sell some that emulate the functioning of the chest, but still not the same. If they have to be used, they are used, more would be missing, but making use of them as an advance that in the future they may have to be used can be counterproductive: there are babies who get confused with the nipple and breast and then do not suck well, produce cracks , they hurt and what was going well starts to go wrong. Come on, that bottle to get used to the future starts a wave of consequences that make the end I ended up taking more bottle than breast, long before the mother started working.
8. Your breasts will fall out
It seems that the image of women is very important in this of motherhood and, just as people insist that you have to recover the form as soon as possible, they insist on try to get to be a mother do not leave a mark on your body (This is how unfortunate our society is, which is more concerned with the image of people than with the well-being of the baby and the mother).
And in that concern he is told not to breastfeed for a long time, that the baby is going to fall from so much breastfeeding. Or put on good bras, that hold well, for the same purpose.
But it is that the breast does not fall for breastfeeding, falls for weight gain in pregnancy, or after pregnancy, falls for age and the passage of time and falls for smoking.
And even if they fell for breastfeeding, what? What is more important, the well-being and health of a baby or the bust of his mother? Because I believe that baby's health is more important and, if the logic does not fail me, the woman's breast develops in puberty so that in adulthood, when she is a mother, she can breastfeed her babies (and not so much so that she can look bust, I think). And besides, if that were the case, wouldn't it be the woman who decided what to do about it? Because there could be women who said "yes, they will fall, so what?"
9. I feel that your breasts should belong to me and not to the baby
Continuing with the function of the breasts, there are men who feel they lose ownership of the breasts because they are no longer there for him as they were before. The woman's chest temporarily loses its sexual function to feed the baby, and there are men (I hope they are few) able to express the complaint to their partners: "I feel they should belong to me and not the baby", in a something like "we could bottle feed it and everything would be like before".
There are also women (I hope they are few) who make that decision themselves, because they say that their breasts are for sex, but as I said in the previous point, the main function is not that, it is to feed the babies. So if you are a man and you feel that, you better not say it and start think a little more about your baby and less about you. Also, your wife's breasts are hers, not the baby's, or yours. Only from her, and she decides what to do with them.
10. Don't let him fall asleep on his chest, or you'll be creating bad sleep habits
Phrase that you can read in books and that even health professionals can tell you, that the breast is for eating and that sleep is something else.
Big and serious mistake. If a mother tries to follow her, she will make the baby cry, because practically all babies fall asleep to the breast (and if they all do, a sign that it is normal). That is, to have a baby who needs the breast to fall asleep is not to have created a bad habit for sleeping, but to have a normal baby.
Breastfeeding gives sleep, baby and mother. The composition of the milk, in fact, changes at night to help the baby to fall asleep and to relate the lack of light to sleep. This he does thanks to melatonin, the hormone that helps us establish the rhythms within the day and the cycles of wakefulness and sleep. The flow of melatonin is variable, depending on the time of day, to help the baby focus on what time of day it is.
Breast is sleepy. Sucking relaxes them. Doing it in mom's lap calms them. Filling your stomach makes you sleepy. Warm milk makes you want to sleep. How to avoid it? Well making the baby suffer. Think of those moments when, in bed at night, you start falling asleep. You close your eyes, start dreaming things and someone says "wake up man!". You wake up, ask what happens and you get angry because they woke you up for no reason. You close your eyes and then you fall asleep again. Again, "wake up!", And they tell you something as absurd as you can not fall asleep because you will associate closing your eyes with sleep or something and then, during the day, when you close your eyes for a moment, you may fall asleep for having taken a bad habit.
