A Breastfeeding Education for the New Mom

If you are a new mother, you may be in need of a bit of a breastfeeding education in order to learn the steps to nursing your newborn.  In this article, we run through a few of the basics for you.

Step one in your breastfeeding education is learning how baby’s mouth should be placed at your breast.  Many children will develop a habit of pushing their tongue up against the roof of the mouth, making it difficult to nurse properly.  If the mother simply uses her breast to lure the child’s mouth open by tracing a line with her nipple from just under the child’s nose and down to their mouth, this should encourage the child to open their mouth without their tongue pressed upward.

The second thing that you’ll learn in your breastfeeding education is the significance of burping.  Burping is very important because it will avoid painful gas building in baby’s stomach.  Although breastfeeding is commonly believed to build less gas than bottle-feeding, your breastfeeding education will teach you that your baby will still have gas issues if you do not burp them after nursing.

As part of your breastfeeding education, you will want to take note of feeding spurts.  During a feeding spurt, your baby has an increased appetite and will consume more breast milk than usual.  This is generally because baby is about to grow.  If you compare feeding spurts with growth spurts, you are likely to find that your child’s increase in appetite is followed by a period of growth.

Unfortunately, part of your breastfeeding experience will be to learn that babies sometimes bite while being nursed.  As your breasts and nipples are sensitive, this can be a painful experience in your breastfeeding education.  Of course, your child does not realize that they are hurting you when this happens.  She or he have no intentional desire to cause you pain.  Because of this, some mothers don’t correct the behavior and simply suffer through it best as they can.  This, however, is not recommended.  A comprehensive breastfeeding education will teach you that you can take easy steps to correct biting.  Just tell your baby, “no”, and gently remove them from your breast.  If biting continues, breastfeeding education suggests that you stop nursing for a period of time when baby bites.  Eventually, the baby will associate their biting with the loss of feeding privileges and correct their behavior.

A good breastfeeding education directs that setting the right mood for nursing time is important.  As your baby grows older, you will see them become more and more aware of the world around them.  While this is a good thing, and wonderful to observe, it means that your baby may become distracted while nursing and you could have a difficult time making sure they get their fill.  To avoid such problems, your breastfeeding education directs you to set a calm mood and space for baby when nursing.  You want baby to be able to comfortably focus on you and their feeding.  This means a quiet room without harsh lighting will usually suffice.

Always remember that breastfeeding your baby is the most natural thing in the world and very intuitive.  The best breastfeeding education you can get is simply the one that comes with more and more experience.  

Article Source:http://www.babycenter-blog.com/2010/09/01/a-breastfeeding-education-for-the-new-mom/