Monday, August 1, 2011

World Breastfeeding Week, Post 1

Today is the beginning of World Breastfeeding Week. I'm celebrating by changing my Facebook profile picture to a picture of me nursing my son (though I wish I had a better one...you can barely tell I'm nursing in the one I have now).

My goal for the week is to post something nursing related every day this week.

Here's my first post...

Over the weekend, I went to a birthday party for a little girl. There were two new moms there. One was nursing and one was feeding her baby a combination of breastmilk and formula. Mom #2 said that she had low supply. When she said that, I bit my tongue.

As we left the party, I said to my husband...I wonder if people realize how few women really have low supply. It wasn't worth making a new mom feel bad or starting any kind of argument when I would likely never see that woman or her child again.

A lot of women don't realize that supplementing can often exacerbate a supply that is borderline. When a woman nurses, her body is given signals that she needs to make more milk. Every time your baby nurses, you are getting milk-making signals. It's a simple supply and demand...or demand and supply as it were. So when you supplement, you are getting fewer demands to make milk....which means your body will make less milk....thus further reducing a supply that may be on the low side.

This is a super simple reduction of a really complex system. Kellymom.com is a great resource for nursing moms. There are also tons of websites and Facebook forums that can help a mom find answers to her breastfeeding questions.

Good luck mamas!

2 comments:

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  2. where did your post go?? i was going to say i know it's not so easy for everyone; there are, of course, individual situations that change things, and some women really do have low supply. but ideally, this is how it goes!

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