purpose of breastfeeding

hi guys i'm heidi kim and this is why i brought you here. i have been so excited about this video that i get to film for you guys. i'm bringing you trine bradshaw who is one of my favorite ibclcs or international board certified lactation consultant here in the phoenix area. so i definitely recommend her if you guys are in the phoenix area or i don't know feel like

driving all the way to phoenix and i will have her website linked down below she's from "breast for baby" but we wanted to do a video with you guys all about the top things that you should be thinking about when you are planning to breastfeed. so as an expectant parent what it is that you might want to know ahead of time because sometimes i think it

it hits you by surprise. you know we spend a lot of time planning for the birth or planning for nesting and that kind of thing but breastfeeding isn't always as natural as well doesn't always come as naturally as we expected to. t: it doesn't come as easily as you would like it to for some so... h: yes and so um i asked trine what what the

things are that she would recommend, that she just thinks every expectant parent that wants to breastfeed should know so... t: well the first one is definitely i think everybody should know that breast feeding is a natural thing but it's also a learned action so kind of like walking or talking it takes awhile and you fall down and eventually you get it

yeah is going to happen at least for most but it doesn't come too easy to everybody. h: yeah and so i think you know we hear a lot about how natural breastfeeding is but for a lot of people it doesn't come naturally and even if you know even know a lot about breastfeeding it can still be pretty challenging so just knowing

that eventually will become kind of second nature like riding a bike you're learning to drive but at first those things can be a little bit challenging t: and also we all watch people walking and we watched people talking and we watch people ride bikes and in our society today you don't get to watch people breastfeeding all the time so a

lot of us are coming into this at least my generation came into it not having really seen a lot of people breastfeeding and not really knowing who to ask because their mothers may have not breastfed or aunts may never have breastfed or sisters h:or if they did you know you didn't necessarily see it either i think it helps to have seen it but a lot of

us haven't so yeah that's a great point. what else would you say? t: i would say this is extremely important this is probably the most important thing to know go and create community. go and find all your resources while you're still pregnant go and find la leche league meetings go and find breastfeeding usa meetings figure out who are the lactation

consultants in your area. are there other support groups in your area? look into whether your hospital has ibclcs on staff and how that whole thing has handled. how often they are available get all those numbers together put the numbers of the ibclcs or the la leche league leaders in your phone prior to having your baby because you will be tired and

you will be unable to really kind of just sit down and figure out who is the better choice for you and it's too late once you have your baby to really do a whole lot of homework so do it ahead of time so you're not going to be quite sleepy. h: i think that's a really great point and the other thing that i would add on top of that is once your baby is

born don't be afraid to use the resources that you've just made that list of. like i know with rosalind i had done that i have a list of people to ask but i was terrified to call an ibclc because i thought to myself "no i must do this" and i was so determined and thought that that was some failure. you're putting

those resources together so that you have them after the fact t: and and also i know when i was used to be a la leche league leader we had people that were on on phone duty all the time. there's always going to be a la leche league leader who's on phone duty and that's what they do. they answer phone calls from new moms and expecting moms answering basic questions

about breastfeeding. i even have people who call me now having just questions and sometimes they don't need a consult or anything they just need to have a couple of questions answered. a really good idea even finding support groups on places like facebook more than milk h: yeah we have a "more than milk" facebook that group too if guys haven't joined it's linked down below.

t: yeah it's it's awesome because you can ask all those little questions that... h: at three in the morning t: yeah okay i always tell my clients that text me when you have the question even if it's two or three in the morning. i turn my phone off when i go to sleep and i turn on again in the morning so when you're up nursing at two-thirty text me the question and

i'll get back to you when i wake up so don't feel like you're keeping me up in the middle of the night that kind of works with a facebook groups because you never know who else is up at two. h: yeah especially facebook groups are little more similar to la leche league because it's there's other moms that are probably up nursing too. so yeah have

have your resources ahead of time. t: the first one is feed your baby early and often the first few hours. i just would really like baby to spend time skin-to-skin that means naked baby you can wear diaper on mom's skin not with a certain between out with any blankets in between just skin to skin after the first few hours i really would urge

people to try and feed their babies every two hours or feed their babies when they are alert and awake because that may be more often than every two hours. h: so often a lot of the like times and stuff like that are based on formula-fed kids because that was really the norm and so you might have a mother-in-law that

saying something like you just fed that baby it can't possibly be time again but newborns eat all the time. when in doubt nurse t: feed the baby whenever they are willing to feed if your baby sleeps a lot in those first 24 hours you may want to wake them up to feed. getting baby naked getting baby skin-to-skin turning on a fans maybe will help to

keep baby kind of alert and willing to work with you because the meconium that in baby system needs to be worked out of their system and your breastmilk in the beginning is a laxative. so when you give your baby your milk your you will be moving out the meconium it's really important. h: and i think that early and often thing is

also really important beyond just that first 24 hours there is look important for that first 24 hours but until baby is up to their birth weight especially you really want to be focusing on making sure that you are just following their cues so staying staying on top of it i i also think maybe sometimes people get a little lost in tracking how many

minutes on which side and all that kind of stuff just if that's how you work that's fine but if you feel confident that your baby has eaten about every other hour for the last 24 hours nobody's going to ask you to document how many minutes on which side which breast them all. h: yeah because they can be tricky to.

because you're like oh she's been on for 20 minutes but has she been actively nursing the whole time because the baby that's nursing actively for 5 minutes would possibly get more milk than a baby that's just been kind of nibbling for half an hour so those numbers are a little trickier but when in doubt feed the baby.

t: so it's a good one and it kind of goes hand in hand with the next one that i wanted to talk about is how your breast milk volume correlates with your baby's stomach size. in the very beginning you will have drops because this is about the size of yours baby stomach so a good teaspoonful is really a full feeding in the very beginning of your

baby's life. after a few days about day five it's moved up to be a little bit bigger so day three or four your milk starts coming in day 5 you'll be able to produce this much this much milk and then on day 10 your baby is your baby's stomach has gone to about this size and so your baby should be able to take a couple of ounces at a time and so when

your baby is born the stomach is not this big. your baby does not need two ounces of food in the very beginning your baby just needs a little tablespoons h: yeah and so with a tablespoon with that being so small too that's part of the reason why they need to eat so often because they fill and then you fill it again and then fill it again

so i think everyone should see those sizes because if you can see like it's the size of a marble it really is not much. t: yeah and so it takes awhile for your colostrum to transition into full milk and that's okay okay okay t: and also a lot of times when people then go oh but i don't have much milk because you have colostrum in the beginning you only have

a little tiny bit and people start feeding formula because they want volume coming into the baby. the formula is constipating and your colostrum is really a laxative so you're colostrum is going to in smaller quantities be able to move the meconium out of a baby system faster h: yeah that's particularly important if

your baby has jaundice for example. t: a lot of the phone calls i get are about babies having lost what is considered a large amount of weight in a few days and a lot of my time is spent kind of appeasing mothers and saying okay how much did your baby weight at birth and how much did your baby weigh when you left the hospital after a day and a half a

lot of times that weight has gone dramatically down in the first 24 hours in the first 24 hours baby loses a lot of the water weight that they gained in utero have been swimming in water for nine months and also a lot of hospital births load mom's up with iv fluids and those iv fluids transfer into the baby as well so the baby will be born with a

lot of extra fluid which then sheds in the first 24 hours so in that way you can see it's not really a true weight loss its kind of so water loss. h: and you're going to expect your baby to lose weight no matter what so just know like your baby will lose weight but that 24-hour weight is generally especially if you've had a hospital birth with a lot of

fluids a more accurate starting point when you're looking at weight gain overall. t: absolutely h: i think that's a great point as well and another point i want to make about iv fluids if you have a lot of iv fluids that can also increase engorgement which can most moms get engorged but it can also create challenges. t: if you can still feel edema in

your hands if you might in your feet especially your feet your ankles if you still feel swollen all that water weight that's extra in your feet and in your wrists it's also going to be in your breasts. h: oh and then the last point we talked a little bit about this and i think the biggest thing is planning ahead so

knowing to plan for breastfeeding you know i think that moms a lot of times don't plan for breastfeeding and just expect it to come naturally and i think that your point about nesting is really really great. so what is that last little bit. t: i find that a lot of moms in that last few weeks before having baby go into nesting

phase and they want to shop for clothes and they want to shop for sheets and toys and all the stuff for a baby when baby comes out here she's not going to need all these things and but they will need a mom who has time to sit with them and spend a lot of time breastfeeding you're going to spend hours breastfeeding in the beginning so i

really like to encourage mom's set up a little breastfeeding area of the house. it doesn't have to be a recliner doesn't have to be a rocker it doesn't have to be anything special but if you have a basket that you can take around with you to the couch area or into your bed that has snacks you going to be hungry as water because

you are going to be thirsty it has a telephone because you are going to somehow remember that you need to text someone about something and you're going to be stuck there for 20 minutes so take your phone with you if your reader bring a kindle which if you would need a remote-control take that with you get some baby wipes get the pads or

spillage and all that kind of stuff get it together in a box that you can take along with you wherever you are so that when you sit down for your 25 minutes with your baby you won't feel like oh i'm stuck here and you'll ever eat and get element but you'll be able to relax and you will have your things with you

water and snacks h: do you have any suggestions for quick easy snacks that you can eat with one hand? t: i love larabars laras are amazing i love them i love them i love them if you're not into that kind of our little snacky granola bars and handfuls of nuts almonds and raisins h: yeah anything you can just grab really really quickly anyways those are some of

our tips with trine bradshaw. if you guys are in the phoenix area and you're looking for an ibclc i say this wholeheartedly she's not only an amazing ibclc she's also a very dear friend of mine and i've seen her work and she was just wonderful so i will have her website linked down below i definitely check her out of and if you're in the

phoenix area. i would really encourage you guys to get those resources ready ahead of time whether la leche league, breastfeeding usa, or an ibclc in your area. i think that having that ahead of time makes it feel much less like a crisis. anyways i hope you guys enjoyed her let me know in the comments what your

biggest breastfeeding tip is that you think new parents should know before the baby comes and if you haven't yet you can check out over on the more the milk facebook group. we've been doing a little bit of live streaming over there as well so anyways i'll talk to you soon bye guys bye