Breast Feeding Class

Jesus was breastfed!

We went to the Breast Feeding Class that the WBWC offers their patients for free. It was good. Even though I've done a lot of reading about it I still learned lots of things. We watched videos too which are really lovely. There's something so natural about watching a baby breast feed. It makes my heart swell. It also makes me wonder why people make such a big deal over breast feeding in public. I can think of thousands of more offensive things to see in public. Anyhoo. (Stepping down from my soapbox.)

These are some things I learned:

• There's no need to burp a breast fed baby. It's the bottle fed babes that swallow air from the bottle and will need burping. So he'll probably need burping if we feed him breast milk from the bottle.
• Leaning back will let the baby be in control of how much milk he's getting. This makes sense. If you are sitting up gravity let's the milk out and the baby will naturally hold his tongue in a way to slow the milk down and perhaps not suck as much due to the gravitational flow. If we lean back the baby has to suck more which is a good thing plus he won't be choking back the milk as much...gahkahahgahkah!!! (Mike does a good impression of a choking, hungry, breastfeeding baby.)
• Skin on skin is a great bonding method. If baby is not hungry and mom is holding him to her chest and is still fussy it might be because he is near the "kitchen" and can smell that milk. The non-milk maker, a.k.a. Mike, may have better luck at holding the baby to his chest since he does not have that milk scent. Plus his deep resonating voice might be soothing, or that fuzzy papa bear chest might feel soft and lush to wee Thunder Bear. 
• We tried on all sorts of baby carriers and talked about how we could nurse while the baby was in the carrier. We tried Maya Wraps, Moby Wraps (we have a Moby) and an Ergo Baby. We also tried nursing pillows such as the Boppy and the Brest Friend. (We have a Brest Friend.) Mike modeled the Maya Wrap for the class.
• I also learned about the 4th trimester (WHAT? That doesn't make sense. Four parts to a trimester?!) It makes me think of when I call the three sections of an NHL Hockey game a trimester or better yet, "What inning are we in?" or "Is it half time"? Poor Mike, the things I put him through. Anyways, what were we talking about? Oh yeah. the 4th trimester. This is basically the first 3 months of the wee baby's life. Here's how they explained it over at Becoming Mamas:

"Basically, it’s the idea that the first 3 months of life are very much an extension of life in the womb for baby. Baby has spent 40 weeks (or thereabouts!) having her every need attended to. She never knew hunger, was always rocked, and could always hear mama’s heartbeat. Given that, it seems pretty unrealistic to expect a newborn baby to adjust to life on the outside instantly. That’s why attempts at scheduling a newborn or unrealistic expectations about sleep frustrate parents more often than not."
  
          It reminds me of my little "Womb to Room" theory that I wrote about in the post "Information
          Overload: What Makes Sense". These first three months are a transition period from all of
          that care in the womb to extending it to the "room" or outside of the womb and slowly making
          a transition into this big world.

• Each pregnant lady had a little life size newborn baby doll. We used these to put in the carriers and with the breast feeding pillows as well as to practice different holds. We had a little sleeping African American baby. He was adorable. Mike handed it to me as if it were a doll, I mean, it is a doll but...he wasn't pretending like it was a real baby and got a laugh from the class.

Our instructor (who is a nurse and a lactation consultant at the birth center) said that these dolls make it all seem so easy. Real babies will have these arms that will constantly get in the way and that the babies will be more wriggly. We learned the traditional or cradle hold, the cross-cradle hold, the football hold and the lying down hold. (click on the image below to see detailed descriptions of holds.)

• We also learned how the baby's lips should be and how he should be positioned on the mama's breast. Mike also did a really good impression of the "flanged" lip that he demonstrated for the instructor. He's such a ham.

It was nice to know that we can call the birth center anytime and talk to a lactation consultant if we are ever having any problems.