How to breastfeed a baby?

Breastfeeding a child is useful for both mother and baby for many reasons. Natural feeding helps the uterus quickly return to normal size, reduces the risk of breast cancer in women, and the baby reduces the risk of allergies and various diseases of the digestive tract.

If you know how to properly breastfeed a child, then during the first six months of his life you will not have any inconveniences associated with going for a milk formula and washing bottles. Milk will always be in your breast, and you can feed your baby at any time, as soon as he gets hungry.

The first few days after giving birth, the mammary glands produce and release a small amount of colostrum - a dense creamy substance containing essential nutrients and antibodies. Colostrum is very useful for a newborn baby, its unique composition helps to strengthen the immunity of crumbs, which is still very vulnerable to a variety of infections. Therefore it is very important for the mother to understand in the maternity home how to breastfeed properly, so that the child from the very birth learned to suck properly.

When breastfeeding, the child should be turned face to face with the mother. The head can be put on the arm fold using an armrest or pillow as a support. Mom should choose a comfortable position for himself. After all, in this situation, she will have to stay between 15 and 30 minutes. The entire nipple and part of the areola should be in the mouth of the baby when properly applied.

Some mothers are concerned about how to breastfeed a baby with insufficient milk. To determine if a child who is breastfeeding suffices to eat, you need to observe the following symptoms. If the child constantly adds weight, urinates at least 6 times a day, is calm and sleeps well, then he gets enough milk. It is necessary to remember that the more often you are breastfeeding, the more it sucks the milk, the more it is produced by your body.

Sometimes a newborn baby can not stick to her mother's breast, although her mother knows how to breastfeed and observes all the recommendations on this matter: she puts the nipple together with the areola into her baby's mouth, watches the lower lip turn out, decant the first portions from the tight chest - nothing helps. Instead of active sucking, the baby only smacks his lips and snaps his tongue. In this case, it is necessary to check whether the short frenum of the tongue, fixing the tongue in the mouth and limiting its movements, is the cause of the difficulties in feeding. The doctor may decide to dissect a short frenum, this manipulation lasts a few seconds and usually does not require anesthesia.

For many years, strict rules prevailed in medicine, requiring the mother to unquestioningly submit to the regime of feeding, which led to frequent crying of hungry children and the frequent completion of feeding before the time limit. Modern pediatricians have a different opinion on how to properly breastfeed a child, recommending the very first days of establishing feeding on demand, that is, at the first crying and restlessness of the crumbs. In this case, Mom, of course, will have to put the carapace to the chest about twenty times a day, almost always being in close connection with the baby.

Breastfeeding allows us to establish new emotional relationships between mother and child, as they will be constantly next to each other, feel the warmth of their own body, maintain the necessary physical contact. Proper organization of breastfeeding will allow you to receive from this process only pleasure and benefit.