Here is a webinar I presented recently with Kathy Fray from the International Integrative Maternity Healthcare Organisation (IIMHCO). This is the first episode on this topic and we will explore some more specific conditions and support measures in part 2 on October 18th. In this episode, we look at how mastitis is now seen as a spectrum of conditions driven by inflammation. We take a look at how inflammation affects lactation, what causes it, and how it can be addressed with appropriate management advice, botanical medicine, and nutritional support. If you have any questions or want to share your experience with this, you can get in touch with me at julie@naturaltransition.com or leave a comment below.
Category: Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding & Natural Baby Care | Discover breastfeeding advice & tips for natural breastfeeding & baby care
Breastfeeding Your Baby After Surgery
I’m so very lucky to have this little gem to publish. It’s written by the fabulously entertaining Trae from Where’s My Glow and is a wonderful post about her experience of breastfeeding her baby after some pretty major surgery along with some good tips. The baby in this post (aka Tricky) is going to become a big brother any day now 🙂 Best wishes for the journey ahead and thanks for sharing your story.
xx Julie
Breastfeeding your baby after surgery By Trae Flett ( aka Glowless of wheresmyglow.com)
The very first time I held my son he was just seconds old, laying on my chest and hollering before rooting around for his first breastfeed. In bewildered awe I stared at his 3.8kg body and his whopping head and said a silent prayer for my future pelvic floor strength. I realized this not-so tiny human was mine and we were now a family. It was perfect… he was perfect.
Eleven weeks of long nights later, when we were finally getting in to the swing of breastfeeding, we discovered that actually, he wasn’t so perfect after all. He was diagnosed with sagittal craniosynostosis, a premature fusing of the plates of the skull, characterized by an elongated head, protruding forehead (known as scaphocephaly – literally translated to “boathead”) and closed fontanel. He had a pretty funky noggin to say the least and was starting to resemble a Sherrin football, albeit an incredibly cute one.
However the main issue with craniosynostosis isn’t aesthetic. The brain’s growth is impacted and in some cases, without surgical intervention, can lead to an increase in intracranial pressure which in turn can cause all sorts of problems including learning disabilities and vision problems.
Only three weeks later he had his first surgery and I discovered that breastfeeding a child after they’ve had surgery is a very steep learning curve and feels just like having a newborn again.
When he came out of surgery with his head bandaged and his eyes swollen half shut he looked like he’d just done ten rounds in the ring. He was connected to what seemed like half a dozen machines and crying like I’d never heard before, but he fed immediately and calmed down… until the anaesthetic started to wear off a few minutes later. My previously “good feeder” and renowned comfort sucker swung between being in intense pain and being completely drugged up both of which meant he was unable to feed.
Once his morphine levels were adjusted and he was in as little pain as possible but alert enough to latch on, our breastfeeding journey was able to continue, albeit still connected to machines that constantly beeped every time he fed (his oxygen levels would drop a little – I’m told that’s quite normal).
Figuring out how to hold him without touching his swollen head or feeling like I was about to pull out a cannula was difficult and required a lot of help from the nurses and family visitors. It was just like learning how to breastfeed all over again.
It was a traumatic time but now, at three years of age, two and a half years of breastfeeding, and with two successful surgeries under his belt, my son is a robust kid with a dare devil streak… and a lovely round head!
My top tips for breastfeeding after your child’s surgery:
- Ask someone to help you position the baby – with all those tubes, having a nurse or family member place the baby in to your arms after you’ve positioned yourself helps enormously and also reduces the fear of pulling out the wires.
- Take a breast pump & storage bags – if your baby is in pain, heavily medicated, or even being kept sedated in ICU, he may not be able to feed as regularly as usual and this can lead to discomfort and a supply drop in some cases. Label the milk with the date, your name and your child’s name and ask a nurse to put it in the fridge/freezer.
- Feed, feed, feed! – being nestled in close and breastfeeding is so comforting to a sick child, and it’s also comforting to mum, too, after such an emotional experience.
Trae is a slightly crunchy mama, a champion procrastinator, wannabe geek and sometime writer. She blogs about life, breastfeeding, recipes and much more at wheresmyglow.com with tongue very firmly in cheek.
9 Things to Know About Breastfeeding and Alcohol During the Festive Season
At this time of year, many women who don’t normally drink will have a few and those that drink regularly, have a few more. A study of 1006 Australians has been reported to show a 1/3 increase in alcohol consumption during the festive season. I know myself as a breastfeeding usually non drinker, that I’ve already had 3 nights out with alcohol consumed in the past 2 weeks. My baby is 11 months old and I can easily metabolise a glass of wine in between feeds. But are there guidelines for combining alcohol and breastfeeding? How long do you need to leave it between drinking and feeding? What about younger babies? Are there any risks to the baby if Mum has a drink or two then feeds?
It turns out we know quite a lot about how alcohol works in breastmilk. It gets into the breastmilk from the blood and leaves the breastmilk at the same rate as alcohol leaves the blood. So if you feel drunk, there will be some alcohol in your milk. The concentration of alcohol in the breastmilk is less than 2% of what mum has had to drink. So unless you’re drinking large amounts, it’s fair to say that baby would be getting only very, very small amounts of alcohol and it’s better to drink and feed than to not feed at all due to the problems the disruption to feeding patterns can cause. However, while we know that only very small amounts of alcohol will be passed through the milk, we don’t know how occasional tiny, tiny amounts of alcohol effects a baby.
Here are 9 things that I think every mother needs to know about drinking and breastfeeding.
- Time taken for alcohol to clear from breastmilk depends on your weight. For an average sized women, it conservatively takes 2 hours to get rid of each standard drink. That’s 2 hours for 1, 4 hours for 2, 6 hours for 3 etc. The smaller you are, the more time it takes to metabolise each drink. Alcohol becomes present in your milk 30-60 mins from the time you start drinking.
- The only way to reduce the amount of alcohol in your breastmilk is to wait it out. Once you stop drinking, the amount of alcohol in your blood and breastmilk will start to drop.
- There is no point to expressing milk while you are drunk to throw affected milk away, the ol’ pump n’ dump is a myth. You just need to wait enough time for the alcohol to clear from the milk. Express only if you need to for comfort. If you do express while affected by alcohol, throw it away because the alcohol will stay in the milk once removed from the breast.5.
- For very young babies, it is best NOT TO DRINK at all. Babies under 1 month old cannot metabolise alcohol, their liver is still maturing. Also, to establish a good supply and avoid feeding difficulties you need to be available to feed a newborn at their whim. This may mean that on the day you decide to have a drink baby decides a feeding marathon is in order and wants to feed every hour. In this case, you don’t have time to metabolise even 1 standard drink between feeds. This may seem a little harsh but, if you wouldn’t drink while pregnant, it’s not that much more to refrain for another 4-8 weeks while your baby develops the ability to cope with the alcohol and you get supply and demand in synch.
- Binge drinking is never a good idea for anyone- breastfeeding or not. But, if you plan to go out and write yourself off, or if you sometimes accidently do so- freeze milk to leave for your baby and find someone take care of your baby until you’re no longer affected by alcohol.
- Breastmilk with a small amount of alcohol in it is still better than any breastmilk substitute. So if baby is hungry, you have no expressed milk, you’ve had a drink or 2 and think you still have alcohol in your milk, feed anyway.
- Alcohol can affect your let down and slow the flow of milk. This may make baby a bit fussy at the breast.
- Babies that are affected by alcohol in the milk may fall asleep quicker but wake more frequently and suffer tummy upsets the next day.
Peace on Earth and good will to all.
x Julie
Additional Information
Women who are breastfeeding are strongly advised not to drink in excess because alcohol impairs a mothers ability to look after her baby. If the mother continues to drink a lot, perhaps it is time to consider alcoholic detox programs to help both mother and child.