As much as you shout at the four winds that breast milk is the best food a baby can receive because he is the one that is thought for him, the most natural, economic and that best helps him in his development many women will end up giving a bottle for lack of help and support after childbirth.
You want to breastfeed but the baby does not take well: cries, hurts you, does not sleep, does not rest, does not rest, cries more, hurts you more, sleeps less, sleeps less, does not gain weight and in the end, although It's not what you wanted, you start giving extra bottles to get out of that loop. And when the days go by and breastfeeding goes better, How to reduce bottles of artificial milk to make exclusive breastfeeding?
Is breastfeeding better?
It depends. There are women who choose not to try again, stop breastfeeding and go directly to the bottles and there are those who prefer to keep trying, looking for someone who detects the problem and offers solutions. And in those, there are many who manage to start breastfeeding satisfactorily, without pain, but with a problem: the baby drinks a lot of artificial milk and little breast milk.
Tip 1: Patience
Breastfeeding is not starting from scratch, unfortunately. If you get to that situation you are not starting your baby and you with this breastfeeding, but you already have a somewhat complicated path. In a way it becomes a little more difficult because the baby has already gained weight, it already requires more "supply" and the breast has not adapted to the new demand, so that is producing below what it would produce if all went well.
In other words, once a baby begins to drink bottles, breast milk production is altered because his hunger is no longer in sync with what he extracts from his mother's chest: he can perfectly be sleeping for three hours after giving four suck on the breast and a bottle and the maternal brain knows nothing about that bottle, but thinks that the baby has enough with that small amount of breast milk to rest so long.
That is why you have to put the matter in, but with patience, because it is not something that is solved in a few hours or days, but a long-term issue.
Tip 2: Let me suck the more, the better
You have to tell your brain that there is a hungry baby, so to believe it your son has to breastfeed very often. As often as possible. This means that you have to try to make the baby do about 10 or 12 shots in 24 hours, or even more if you ask.
As the amount you get from the chest is not what you would like to get, it may be a good idea to be very attentive to your demand: to the minimum that, while asleep, move a little, or open the mouth, put it to the chest before it cries . A baby still half asleep usually breastfeeding better than one who has already started cryingHe is nervous and wants to eat as soon as possible and the better.
Also, completely forget about the clock. Nothing to say "it takes ten minutes, I change my chest", but let him breastfeed until he no longer wants it or asks for change.
Tip 3: Sleep nearby and no pacifier
Sleeping near the baby makes the mother more alert to movements, gemidites, etc., and can probably breastfeed more often than if the baby is not close to the mother.
In addition, the pacifier can fool the baby and calm the crying when in fact it could have sucked. As you have to take every possible opportunity, you have to avoid using pacifiers.
Tip 4: Baby bottle? It depends
One of the problems of the bottle is that the effort that a baby has to make to eat is quite little in relation to that made by a breastfed baby, who has to suck.
That is why it has always been recommended that if you want to give breast milk Do not use a bottle, but a syringe or glass.
If with this the baby did not eat well, a bottle designed for nursing mothers could be used. They are bottles with a valve that slows the fall of milk so that the baby has to suck for him to fall, in a way more similar to the chest than traditional bottles.
Tip 5: Don't forget about artificial milk
It is clear that the idea is to remove it, but if they gave it to the baby at the time it is for some reason and removing it too soon can be worse than doing it more slowly. By this I mean that we cannot take several shots at once because the baby could start to go hungry, be more irritable and make us suffer for him and suffer ourselves.
It all depends, obviously, on how much artificial milk you will drink. Because if mixed breastfeeding was based on breastfeeding and a 30 ml bottle, the withdrawal is much simpler than if we talk about a breastfeeding in which after breastfeeding the baby already took 90 ml every 2-3 hours.
In the second case you have to go slowly and control the weight.
Tip 6: Withdraw about 50 ml per day
The first step, in addition to everything discussed above, is remove from the total artificial milk the baby takes in one day, 50 ml. Both can be done by removing two 25 ml portions of two bottles, such as removing less quantity in more shots (remove 5 times 10 ml, for example, for which it is enough to prepare the bottle as usual and make it take 10 ml less each) .
This withdrawal remains a few days to be supplied by the production of breast milk.
To know that we are doing well, we should weigh the baby after a week and wait who has gained about 125 grams or more in weight:
- If you had gained that weight, you reduce another 50 ml, keeping the new reduction for another week until you weigh it again.
- If you do not earn enough, the same amount is maintained for another week, without going up or down, and if the baby does not increase those 125 grams or more a week later, artificial milk is increased again to the starting point.
Tip 7: Find someone who can help you on the spot
Because this to reduce artificial milk, increase breastfeeding and control weight may not go well, and do otherwise.
Sometimes, if the baby barely holds the breast, what works is to give bottles without reducing the amount and be extracting milk so that little by little the milk from the bottle ends up being maternal, and go spontaneously securing as many times as necessary for the baby to finally catch (sometimes it is for lack of strength, they are little, they have been eating little days, and they are so sleepy and tired that they fall asleep without doing one take in conditions).
But this, of course, depends on each situation and evolution. Therefore, although we give you some general advice, it is recommended have someone in front of you who knows the subject and that I can study the case to go offering solutions.
