Category: Newborn Nursing

When You Feel Awkward Seeing Breastfeeding in Public

hollymilkowski September 16, 2017

For one reason or another, some people feel awkward when they see a woman breastfeeding her child in public. This does not necessarily make them bad people. Their feelings can be perfectly valid; it takes a unique set of nature and nurture to arrive at the point of feeling awkward with a specific trigger such as this.

For those who aren’t accustomed to seeing breastfeeding in public and are largely uninformed about how it all works, a little patience may be needed as they adjust. After all, few of us have been spared from American culture’s mixed messages about women’s roles and heavy promotion of both infant formula and breasts as sex objects.

That said, misunderstanding and ignorance are acceptable; projection of fears and lashing out with harassing or discriminatory behavior are not.

Here are a few ideas about what to do and not do if you’re not yet comfortable seeing breastfeeding in public (but you’re working on it, right?).

Breastfeeding Concerns During a Natural Disaster: Babies Still Need To Eat

hollymilkowski August 30, 2017

Via Associated Press

As I write this*, I’m taking note of the tornado warnings that have made my phone beep seemingly every hour for the past few days. The sound of rain pelting the windows. Bayous and reservoirs cresting over. I’m watching friends’ and neighbors’ homes flood in real time. Reading about pleas for rescue as families seek refuge from rising water in their attics and on their roofs. You could say things are out of control.

Amid all of this, babies still need to eat. Newborn babies who took their first breath at a Houston area birth center after tropical storm Harvey made landfall. Older babies who nurse around the clock or drink expressed or powdered milk or formula supplements.

The stores are closed and roads are crumbling or underwater. Formula is now largely inaccessible. But babies still need to eat.

Pumping moms need to continue pumping to avoid mastitis, supply issues, and maintain production. What about when the power goes out? Or when the house floods and the circuit board must be shut off? Hopefully they have a manual pump or have been taught how to hand express… because babies still need to eat.

New mothers, welcomed into motherhood with all the terrific drama Mother Nature herself could muster: I hope you have a (relatively) easy time getting started. The well-trained eye of a lactation consultant in your home, personally assessing latch and other tricky spots, cannot compare to scouring the internet for emergency breastfeeding help in the early days. But no one is risking travel across town for ‘work’ in a deluge. A lucky mother has her phone fully charged and ready to go with breastfeeding apps right now because, of course, babies still need to eat.

*(Flood waters have since receded from my neighborhood and we’re doing fine now. However, eleven million people in the southeast counties of Texas are still trying to get a grip on the continued consequences of this historic flooding). Read More

For The Breastfeeding Mom With Body Mods

hollymilkowski January 30, 2017

Last year at a La Leche League Conference, a woman held a seminar called “Babies, Breasts, and Body Mods: Where Body Art and Breastfeeding Collide.” Robyn Roche-Paull, BSN, RNC, MNN, IBCLC, LLLL, USN veteran (say all that ten times fast!) was herself clearly no stranger to permanent and semi-permanent body decor.

The room was packed with Leaders, lactation specialists, medical workers, and breastfeeding advocates who all wanted to know: What’s a mama need to know about body art and possible impact upon her boobie monsters?

Roche-Paull’s lecture got me thinking… especially since I’ve had my eye on the prize of a new tattoo since before my last pregnancy, and waiting until weaning years from now sounds a tiny, wee bit torturous.

These days, there’s not such a strong stigma or taboo attached to mothers who have body modifications, but many women find themselves wondering what’s the best protocol for fresh body mods during the lactation period. When they consult their care providers, many really haven’t the faintest clue how to answer.

What exactly are body modifications? Popular types include branding (3rd degree burns to create scars), piercing, scarification (cutting), and tattooing. Here we’ll focus on the most prevalent: piercings and tattoos.

Now a little crash course for you curious body art geeks…

If I Could Give Only 5 Pieces of Breastfeeding Advice To a New Mom

hollymilkowski January 6, 2017

If you could give only five pieces of breastfeeding advice to a new mother, what would you say? Here’s what I’d tell her.

What Not To Say To A Breastfeeding Mom Who Has Oversupply

hollymilkowski December 6, 2016

I make lots of milk. I won’t hesitate to admit I’m satisfied with this fate. That said, it is a little harder to explain how my overly zealous breasts have also caused several of my main nursing challenges.

After a third official run-in with mastitis since giving birth seven months ago (fifth time between two babies), please hear me when I say… sometimes this blessing feels a bit like a curse in disguise.

Is Infant Circumcision Incompatible With Breastfeeding?

hollymilkowski November 17, 2016

Is circumcision the ‘Voldemort’ in a conversation about early breastfeeding difficulties? Though it’s a studied certainty that infant circumcision can have ruinous effects upon breastfeeding, it seems only the rare or high-profile breastfeeding expert dares to mention this risk by name, much less maintain an official protocol for assistance if challenges arise.

Setting Breastfeeding Boundaries With An Older Child (Plus Nursing Aversion)

hollymilkowski August 2, 2016

I know he is only three and a half. He’s still such a little kid. Next to me, he doesn’t look so little, being more than half my height and all. It’s like that 2012 TIME magazine cover, you know, when Jamie Lynne Grumet nursed her three-year-old, balanced with his feet flat on a chair, and everyone thought he must’ve been graduating elementary school.

MaiTai is an old soul, this kid. But he’s still just a kid, or transitioning to what most people imagine when they think of a school-age child (he’s not quite there yet), and only four years ago he was a floating fetus.

For whatever reason, child-led weaning is controversial in our society (the superstitions surrounding it are unfounded, of course). Many a mother is pressured with interrogation into why her child is “still” breastfeeding, “when are you going to stop this,” declarations of “at his age he shouldn’t be so dependent” and the classic “I’m all for breastfeeding BUT…”

At a wedding one year ago, MaiTai was 2.5 years old and I hadn’t yet encountered a situation when I needed to make him wait to nurse. Some of the messages/comments on the post I wrote about our experience nursing there said he should’ve been able to wait “at his age.”

Really? Are two-year-olds really all that great at waiting for anything? In any case, sure, he could’ve waited long enough for us to relocate to a dungeon or wherever they deemed more appropriate — but there was no reason for me to say “not here, not now,” therefore it didn’t even cross my mind.

There was no good lesson in making my child wait for something he felt he needed — in a moment when I was perfectly able and willing to give it to him — just to prove to overly-interested others that he can hold his shit together.

In this story of a mother and child forced to quit nursing to appease family, the author writes: “Those who had demanded that she wean her toddler didn’t even know what that breastfeeding relationship was; they didn’t know what they were asking; they were ignorant, and didn’t even know what they didn’t know.”

That said… Now that I’m tandem nursing MaiTai and his baby brother Julep, we do often find ourselves in situations in which MaiTai has to wait to nurse.

(Scroll to the bottom of this post for ideas about how to set boundaries).