Lactation, prepared before giving birth

There are few months to childbirth but already think allatterai breastfeeding your baby? Do not delay, start to prepare! How? Reading the advice of the expert, will be useful when you go to the hospital to give birth. Why were the early days with the baby are really valuable for the success of breastfeeding.

The advice and information on how to prepare for breastfeeding have been developed with the help Paola Paschetto professional counselor Lactation (IBCLC, International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners ).

Ask the hospital if they practice rooming in. Rooming-in means that the child is left in the room with her ​​mother for the duration of hospital stay. Now more and more widespread, but not all hospitals are able to guarantee it, often for organizational reasons, and so the child spends most of the day in the nursery and is brought to the mother only at scheduled times for feedings. Here's a list of the Baby-Friendly Hospitals.

The child must be able to attach to the breast when he wants to. Especially in the first days of life, and then when it is still in the hospital, the child must be able to attach to the breast as often as you want and not on a schedule. In the early days, in fact, the baby is also 10-12 feedings during the day, either by hunger, thirst for you, you just want to be comforted by the mother's womb. Establish strict schedules for feedings not only meets the needs of the child, but does not stimulate milk production.

If it is not practiced rooming-in and the baby is in the nursery between feedings and the other to appease its eventual crying probably be given small amounts of formula or glucose solution. Already in the hospital, you have to give additions, infant formula or other liquids, unless absolutely necessary. For the success of exclusive breastfeeding, it is important not to give the baby other additions, for two main reasons:

• only if it is attached to the breast, the child learns the correct rules of sucking and it is not distracted from teats or pacifiers, involving a technique of sucking different and are likely to 'confuse';
• the more the baby attaches to the breast, the more it stimulates the production of milk, it is shown that the arrival of the milk supply can also anticipate 12-24 hours if there are no 'distractions' external. If the dates are added at the moment of feeding the baby will have less hunger and less stimulate milk production.