I have been blessed to have been able to breastfeed all of our babies. I have actively breast fed for over 10 years (and still counting). I have breastfed through the first 6-7 months of pregnancy several times and have conceived while breastfeeding 9 times.
This is not to say that I’m an expert on the subject or that it has always been easy. Breastfeeding a baby takes effort, sacrifice and an amount of selflessness but the end result is worth it.
Since this is World Breastfeeding Week I thought that I’d share some of the best advice that I’ve received, some things that I’ve learned and the tips that have about breastfeeding over the past 10 years. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, (Check out Connie’s list) but rather these are the things that have been important to my success and/or that I’ve had to learn the hard way.
Read The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.
Even though this book is not written from a Christian perspective, you will be amazed at the wonderful way that God designed a woman’s body to provide the perfect nourishment for her baby. Information, encouragement and motivation to keep going, this book from Le Leche League has it all. Your local library should have a copy.
Drink.
Drink at least 2 quarts of water daily. If I’m not drinking enough, I notice a drop in milk supply within 2 days! (More on this in tomorrow’s post)
Nurse frequently.
This is especially important during the first 2-4 weeks. Every woman is different, but I know that I have to nurse at least every 3 hours during the day in order to maintain an adequate milk supply.
Change baby’s diaper before you feed on the second side.
Most of my baby’s like to fall asleep while nursing. Changing their diaper before I finish feeding them does a couple of things. One it wakes them up so that they are more ready to finish nursing and two when they are finished on the second side you don’t have to rile them up by changing a diaper.
Don’t be a strict scheduler.
This is coming from someone who LOVES schedules. While it’s true that some women can strictly schedule their babies and maintain an adequate milk supply, for many it can severely limit your ability to provide adequate nutrition for your baby.
There is another reason that I suggest that you not be a strict scheduler. I know a lot of moms of many and each of us purposely parent our younger children differently than we parented our older children. We’ve learned something valuable through our parenting experiences. We better understand the importance of relationship and we know better how to build that relationship with our small children. As a result we relax our schedules and spend more time holding, loving, nursing and enjoying our younger children. As one mom of 9 succinctly put it, “We start out as Ezzo parents and end up as Sears parents”.
Babies go through frequent growth spurts when they will want to nurse much more frequently than usual.
Baby will seem fussy and want to eat almost constantly, this is normal and provides them with needed nutrition while increasing your milk supply and only lasts one to two days.
Use lactation consultants.
I mentioned in the opening paragraph that I’ve had a lot of experience breastfeeding however, every time I’m offered help from a lactation consultant I say yes. Even when I was in the hospital with Bella we spent about 30-40 minutes with the lactation consultant and I learned something new.
Stay close to your baby.
This may not be popular and you are certainly welcome to ignore my suggestion. We believe that there may be a bigger, more important reason than physical nutrition that new babies need their mom to feed them and feed them often, relationship.
While pumping and giving the baby a bottle of breast milk will certainly fulfill a child’s physical needs, perhaps we and they are missing out on some of the benefits of relationship that nursing provides. In our house this means that no one other than mommy has ever fed any of our babies breast milk. We think that God may have designed the mother as the source of physical nourishment for her baby as a means of building this initial and vital relationship and we desire to follow His design as much as possible.
You can get pregnant while you are breastfeeding.
You can get pregnant if you are exclusively breastfeeding (before starting solids). You can get pregnant if you are still getting up several times during the night to nurse your baby. You can get pregnant without having any cycles between pregnancies. God is in control! Don’t do anything that would put another pregnancy at risk.
We live in a fallen world and sometimes, even if you do everything ‘right’ you may not be able to breastfeed or exclusively breastfeed your baby.
Don’t be naive or stubborn about this. Be sure that your baby is having 6 – 8 wet diapers within a 24 hour period and keep an eye out for other signs that he/she is getting enough. If you’re concerned contact a lactation consultant and/or doctor immediately. Nourishing your baby with formula is not failure.
Do/did you breastfeed? What breastfeeding advice has helped you?
[...] Photo credits for the bike port go to Alyssa (9), because I was busy feeding the baby. [...]
Thanks for this helpful blog post on breastfeeding! As of this summer I, too, have nursed for more than a decade–only I have only five children!
My youngest is almost weaned, and due to my age he will likely be my final baby. So, I am about to leave my nursing days behind me. 
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How long do you BF for?
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
September 4th, 2010 at 5:34 am
I’ve always been open to BFing for as long as the baby wants. I have always conceived while BFing and I find that the baby usually weans himself by the time I’m in the third trimester. I know that’s not true for everyone, but that has been my experience.
I’ve Bfed each baby for at least a year and for as long as 18-20 months.
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I am so blessed to have been able to breastfeed all 3 of my babies without much trouble at all (so far, at least… my 3rd is only a few weeks old!).
As far as advice goes, the only thing I’d add to your wonderful list is to make sure your baby is latching well. Get help from a Lactation Consultant if you’re not sure or if it hurts. For me, that is key for not only avoiding breast trauma but also to make sure baby can get enough (if I’m in pain, there is tension in my body that inhibits letdown).
Oh, and I’ll also mention the trick I used in my days as a newborn nursery nurse helping new mamas get the hang of feeding: Once you get the baby positioned & latched on, make a conscious effort to relax your shoulders all the way down and then take a deep breath in and out… Relaxing goes a long way in letdown/ milk production.
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I have been blessed by reading your blog- I just found it today but will definitely become a regular reader! Do you have any weaning tips? I need to wean my 15 month old daughter for health issues (mine) and the fact that my husband and I are taking our youth group to camp for a week and will be leaving the children with my mom (he’s a youth pastor).If we stay busy she can now go on one time nursing a day. I’m worried that she will have a hard time once I am gone, however. Thanks!
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
June 15th, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Thank you Bran.
I don’t have weaning tips because all of our babies have self weaned. I struggle with milk supply and have been pregnant by baby’s first birthday all but one time, so the little ones just wean themselves somewhere between a year and 18 months. Sorry.
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Thankfully, I have been able to breast feed all four of our babies and they all, (except our 4th because she is only 1 month!) weaned themselvs! Out of the 4, I breast fed 2 while pregnant with the next until I was 3-4 months along. I have had ups and downs with milk supply like everyone else! I love what was said about not scheduling. Even some Midwives will encourage you to “schedule by such and such an age”. The less I schedule, the happier and more well-fed my baby is. Things I have found to increase supply besides letting baby nurse whenever they need to are:
1. Lots of Water
2. 2 – 4 cups of Raw, yes Raw cow’s or goats milk or 1 cup of raw milk kefir a day if you can tolerate milk products.
3. Plenty of good fats, like butter, ghee, or coconut oil.
4. Just eating enough in general! When we get busy with kids, we forget to eat sometimes, don’t we?!
5. Pastured Eggs! (I eat between 3-6 a day)
6. Proper supplemental nutrition, especially for hormone regulation. I get treated by a great chiropractor that uses Standard Process supplements and some homeopathics. When my milk supply was really low at one point with our third, he even did a few accupunture points and it helped TREMENDOUSLY for a quick fix. I have only resorted to that twice though.
7. Sleep…I know, it eludes us all, but the more we can get, the better the supply will be.
These are the things that have always helped me. And for those of you new to a high fat approach to diet that are wondering if I weigh 300 lbs, well, I don’t. In fact, I always lose my baby weight within 2-4 weeks of birth. I attribute it to the butter.
I have been living a Weston A. Price lifestyle of eating since just after birthing my first 6 years ago. It’s amazing. 
I LOVE what Amber said about proper latching and Relaxing while nursing. Great advice!
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A new tip I received from my midwife upon the birth of #5:
The very first feeding after the birth, lie on your back with baby’s belly on your belly. Let her root and hunt for the nipple. Latch-on for me was quick and painless, and it was the first time I did not spend the first week with toe-curling pain with every latch-on. Painless every time. It makes recovery and everything else easier. It’s worth trying, right?
I will be trying it again in the spring
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