7 Best Breastfeeding and Lactation Tips

Even though breast milk is the main feeding for a newborn, some women are not able to breastfeed and they are looking for the proper baby formula that can suit the needs of their babies. Sometimes, women can have enough milk to breastfeed but it’s difficult to establish lactation.

Feed your baby on demand, not on the schedule

Let a baby eat as much milk as it needs. Don’t stop feeding until a newborn drops the nipple on its own or falls asleep. Pediatricians recommend feeding a baby every 2 hours during the day and at least 4 times at night.

Don’t skip the night feed because they are an essential element for maintaining lactation. Besides, there is no need to force a kid to eat much. If a baby does not latch on, don’t force it.

There is no need for water

Breast milk consists of 87% water, so giving a baby extra water during the first six months is not worth it.

Nighttime feedings

Night feedings are good stimulants of lactation. The hormone prolactin is produced at night in the largest amount, so you should feed a kid on demand. By the way, at the end of breastfeeding, night feedings are most often removed last.

Do not use baby pacifiers or bottles with nipples

Bottle feeding and baby pacifier sucking can lead to early stopping of breastfeeding. The technique of sucking a bottle ​​and the technique of breast sucking are very different because different muscle groups are engaged.

For example, when sucking a bottle, a baby works more with sponges, draws in its cheeks, tightens its tongue, and when sucking the breast, the lower jaw works, the chest lies on the tongue, so when combining such different sucking methods, some babies begin to take the breast incorrectly and refuse from breast altogether.

Don’t wake up a baby to feed

If a kid is growing well and gaining weight, then there is no need to specifically wake it up. It will be much better if a newborn wakes up. Therefore, before bringing it to the chest, talk, play with it, change the diaper and then start feeding.

Keep an infant close to you

Try to keep a child as close to you as possible so that it touches the chest with its chin. The nose of a newborn baby is pointing up, so it doesn’t have difficulty breathing while latching on to the breast, so that a kid learns to suck and breathe at the same time.

How to understand if a child consumes enough milk?

Two indicators can help to understand if a baby receives enough milk. The first is whether the rate of growth and development of a newborn is sufficient. The second indicator is the urination of a child. If a baby is healthy and is fed well it does diapers painlessly and up to six times a day.

Of course, this is not the whole list of tips. There are cases when a mother does everything right, but it still fails to establish lactation. In such cases, it is natural to feed a baby with formula because modern technologies make it possible to create nutrition that is practically similar to breast milk.

Most often, parents give preference to organic formula. Indeed, because the ingredients used for the best organic baby formula are grown without pesticides and other chemicals, the risk of allergies is significantly reduced.