Hitting Your Feeding Goals

When I teach the feeding class to my antenatal course I always ask what their plans or hopes are for feeding their baby. The answers are varied but usually include that they would like to breastfeed or they hope or plan to try to breastfeed. Often they aren't confident they will breastfeed because they know people who have had difficult journeys before.

What can you do before your baby arrives to make sure that you can succeed in the feeding journey you want to have?

This might not mean exclusively breastfeeding your baby, you might choose to breastfeed for the first weeks or months, you might be planning to express to give some bottles or to combi feed with formula. My goal is to support you to feed your baby in the way that you want to, with the information you need to help you get there.

1.      Prepare before baby arrives.

Think about your choices. Think about you. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to learn about feeding before your baby arrives. Trying to figure it out on the postnatal ward is tough, and if you don’t know anything about milk production or latching a baby, you are going to find it hard initially to take in all this new information.

Check whether your hospital does feeding classes, or find an antenatal class locally to you that does. Your local health visiting team might offer something. I cover feeding in one session of the Antenatal Course, so if you are local to me look into that option. If not, I recorded my full session so you can access any time, refresh your memory and use it before and after baby arrives. You can access it here https://www.bethowen.uk/shop

For some the thought of exclusively breastfeeding is tough. Knowing your baby is dependent only on you can make you feel anxious or trapped. If you are concerned about this side of things then you might feel that some use of a bottle will make things more comfortable for you and you can build that into your preparations. Learn more about expressing or combi feeding and know how to pace bottle feed a newborn.

2.      Plan your support

There are two lots of support to consider here. The close support you already have and the external support you might need.

Knowing where your local feeding drop in groups are, or even visiting in pregnancy, can save you a lot of hassle once baby arrives and you have to search up and find new locations. You might also do some research into private support – who are the local lactation consultants and what do the offer. And definitely no harm in having the National Breastfeeding Helpline number stuck on your fridge! (0300 100 0212 – available 24/7).

But who will see day to day? Your partner can be a great support, if they attended a class with you hopefully they will remember lots of tips to help. They are also the one who will need to making sure you drink and eat regularly, grab stuff for you when you are trapped by a baby and just generally makes sure you are able to spend as much time focusing on feeding as you need to.

Family and friends can also be so helpful. If they have breastfed their experiences might really help you. If they haven’t or it wasn’t a positive journey for them it might be worth a conversation about your plans and just setting out some boundaries. The common ‘I formula fed and it was just fine’ or ‘Wouldn’t a bottle be easier?’ isn’t always the most helpful when you are trying so hard to make breastfeeding work.

Think about all the ways they can help to make things easier; picking up shopping, bringing a meal, holding baby while you nap etc.

3.      Look after yourself

I know, you just had a baby. You are so far down the list of priorities you might have fallen off it! But you need to look after yourself when you are breastfeeding. Not to mention recovering from birth. Your body is working incredibly hard at healing as well as at milk production.

Making sure you eat and drink plenty (ideally healthy options!) because your need for both calories and fluid will be higher. So many postnatal mamas with snacks by the bed for the middle of the night.

Make sure you are taking time to rest. A new baby is more demanding than you realise. They might just sleep most of the time but frequent nappy changes, new clothes, and the energy of feeding all have an impact. Ask for help when you need it and listen to your body. It isn’t easy with a new nocturnal person but try and sleep when you can.

4.      Watch the baby

I mean obviously you will spend hours watching your baby like a hawk! Not quite what I mean. Parents just want to ‘get it right’ and that means reading books, websites, chatrooms and absorbing all sorts about routines, time between feeds, length of feeds, time on each breast, one breast or two and more. It can be incredibly overwhelming just reading it all let alone trying to put any of it into practice.

Your baby might not be completely on board with the plans you have from all this reading. They have pretty simple needs and when they need feeding, they need feeding. Sleep time is sleep time even if the book said they need to be awake another 30 minutes.

Rather than worrying about timings just watch your baby. Respond to their cues and feed when they show signs. It doesn’t matter if it was 2 hours ago or 20 minutes, if they want to feed put them to the breast. They breastfeed for so many more reasons than hunger and nutrition so it is best (and usually easiest) just to go with their flow.

The same goes for apps. You can log everything on a baby app and some parents do find this helpful but sometimes it is just easier to go with the flow of your day and not worry about feed and nap times. I wrote more about this here https://www.bethowen.uk/post/baby-apps-help-or-hindrance

Don’t be afraid you are setting yourself up for a fail if plan to breastfeed. There is lots of information and support out there to help you get where you want to be. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work for many reasons but it can help to know that you tried what you could and you were able to make informed choices every step of the way.

Beth x