What position will be uncomfortable when feeding?
Incorrect attachment causes cracked nipples and breast refusal.
Solution: make sure that the child grasps the entire areola of the nipple, turning out the lower lip. Discomfort and pain in the mother are a sign of improper attachment to the breast. Recommended positions for breastfeeding:
- Lying: on your side without resting on your elbow, with a small pillow under your head. The baby lies nearby, slightly below the chest. Help him open his mouth wide and grab the nipple. During feeding, support the baby's back with your hand or use a rolled-up diaper or towel.
- Sitting: place a pillow under your back and a special cushion for feeding under your baby. This will avoid fatigue even with prolonged sucking. Make sure that the baby opens his mouth wide and grasps the nipple along with the areola.
- Some find it convenient to feed while sitting, some while lying down, some while standing – the position doesn’t really matter, the main thing is that the baby latch onto the breast correctly.
How to overcome rejection?
Every mother faces the problem of why a child refuses breast milk. Many parents will be able to eliminate many of the causes of this problem on their own.
- First, the mother needs to calm down, because the child takes on all changes in the mother’s behavior. Before feeding, be sure to stretch your breasts by giving a light massage over the entire surface, or take a warm shower.
- If the mother does not attach the baby to the breast correctly, he may latch onto only the nipple instead of the entire areola. To resume the process, you should calm and caress the baby, then coat the areola with breast milk, press it with your fingers and give it to the baby. During the process, it is necessary to ensure that the mouth covers the entire part of the chest.
- If it is not convenient for the child to take the nipple, then you can purchase special pads or use massage movements to pull it out.
- To change the taste of milk, mother should follow a diet and include only healthy foods in her meals. Excess fatty, salty, smoked foods directly affect the quality and taste of milk. Also, taking any medications, even vitamins, must also be done under the supervision of a doctor.
- In the case of menstruation, special efforts should not be used. You just need to wait a few days and the taste of the milk will change itself at the end of the menstrual cycle.
- If your baby refuses milk due to illness, you should definitely take him to the doctor. The doctor will prescribe treatment based on the diagnosis. It is under no circumstances recommended for a mother to treat her child on her own, as this can cause harm to health.
If all the reasons associated with the mother’s incorrect actions have been eliminated, then it is necessary to urgently contact a specialist.
If there are serious contraindications to breastfeeding, the doctor will conduct the necessary examinations and may recommend switching to artificial feeding, selecting an age-appropriate infant formula for the baby.
#PROMO_BLOCK#
Short bridle
With this anatomical feature, the baby cannot suckle for a long time and gets tired quickly, as a result of which he refuses the breast. However, after an hour and a half he asks to eat again.
Solution: contact a pediatric surgeon (or dentist), he will determine the need for surgical correction of the frenulum; this is a fairly simple operation that is performed from the first days of life.
It is important!
You need to be patient, with such characteristics breastfeeding is possible, it just takes more time.
Child's refusal to breastfeed: causes and consequences
In modern civilized society, a child’s refusal to breastfeed is a fairly common occurrence. Surely, you have often heard stories from mothers about how the child “somehow suddenly” refused to suckle. This can always be dealt with. Let's figure it out. Interestingly, in societies that have preserved the archaic culture of raising children, genuine breast refusal practically does not occur. And in Europe, for example, 65% of children who suck a pacifier by the age of 3 months refuse to breastfeed if their mother has milk! According to the observations of specialists, the situation in Russia is very similar. It turns out that a child’s refusal to breastfeed is a privilege exclusively of a civilized society, where there are pacifiers, pacifiers, bottles, as well as a lot of conflicting information on child care.
Apparent breast refusal
In the practice of lactation consultants, the child’s refusal to breastfeed is in second place in the frequency of requests after suspected lack of milk. In 20% of cases, this is an apparent refusal, which occurs in almost all infants aged 4 to 7 months. During periods of wakefulness, it can be difficult to hold the baby at the breast, or he sucks little by little and is distracted by any rustle. At the same time, he actively sucks before falling asleep and after waking up, and also increases the number of nightly attachments. This behavior is normal, and neither the weight nor the development of the child is affected. Sometimes mothers of newborn babies call breast refusal the behavior of the child when he turns his head and seems to be turning away from the breast. In such a situation, the mother must orient the child and skillfully attach him to the breast. This behavior occurs when a child is unwell or ill. Typically, these are complications related to the nose and mouth. This child needs treatment.
Genuine breast refusal
In the remaining 80% of requests, there is a genuine refusal of the child to breastfeed, which happens especially often between birth and 4 months, and after 8-9 months of the child’s life. It looks like this:
- the child does not take both breasts; - takes one breast well, does not take the other at all; - sucks only in a dream, and refuses to suck when awake; - behaves restlessly at the breast, sucks a little, then drops, cries, starts sucking again, drops again, turns away, arches.
If this has been going on for several days, you need to take immediate action. First of all, it is necessary to find the reasons for refusal and help mother and baby continue breastfeeding.
Reasons for breast refusal
Reason No. 1 Use of pacifiers and pacifiers, bottle feedings. The most common reason for giving up breastfeeding is in favor of another method of sucking. Not a single pacifier is similar in shape to the breast, so babies suckle the breast and pacifier differently. The “nipple confusion” that arises in the child leads to the fact that the baby chooses the most convenient method of sucking for him. Some children choose the breast (they refuse the pacifier), others combine the pacifier and breast, but most children still choose the ill-fated pacifier and pacifier. In any case, the use of a pacifier leads to separation between mother and child, when the mother gives the child an “artificial sedative” to calm her down.
In case of such a refusal, the first thing to do is to exclude the use of pacifiers and pacifiers. They go “to the far corner” and never return (ask your husband or grandmother to hide them from you so that “your hand doesn’t reach out”). If the baby receives expressed milk or formula from a bottle, then instead of a bottle a spoon, or a pipette, or a syringe without a needle appears.
You will learn in practice which way it will be more convenient for your baby to receive supplementary feeding, having tried all the methods.
At the same time, you need to increase the number of attachments to the breast (or attempts to attach). Particularly successful are attempts to put a sleepy baby to the breast when he is about to fall asleep (or is about to wake up). Make sure your baby is latching correctly. If you carry your baby in your arms a lot during the day, you will need a sling. At night, put your baby to sleep in your bed and feed him at least three times.
Enlist the support of relatives. Their help will be invaluable in organizing your life with your child. Stay with your child for two weeks without involving anyone to care for him. Your baby may have difficulty latching to the breast due to sucking on the pacifier. Correct attachment and comfortable positions for feeding should be specially trained.
The time required to retrain a child familiar with a pacifier varies for children of different ages. For a child in the first three months of life - from 7 days to 2-3 weeks. For an older child, retraining may take several weeks. But the mother must have a very good idea of why this is being done. If your baby cries, turns away from the breast and demands a pacifier, you need to know that this is just his set of habits. And you will not be “breaking” your established character, but your own incorrectly formed habits. This is not violence, but the most ordinary retraining. After all, now no one is embarrassed by retraining a child from sucking a breast to sucking a pacifier.
Reason No. 2 Errors in caring for the child, and, as a result, the destruction of the child’s faith in the reliability of the mother. It occurs in infants who are fed on demand and do not suck a pacifier, but when the child finds himself in conditions for which he was not designed by nature, and he loses the desire to suck the mother's breast. If such a child is not given a pacifier, then he switches to active sucking of fingers and fists. We call this kind of refusal “mother’s abandonment”; fortunately, it is relatively rare, but rehabilitation after it can last a very long time. To better imagine what “abandoning your mother” looks like, I’ll give two examples from my practice:
Lena asked for advice when the baby was 5 days old. For the first 3 days he slept soundly, and, according to his mother, “did not require the breast.” After I started sucking, cracks appeared on my nipples and my breasts began to hurt. During the conversation, it became clear that the birth took place at home and the child was born in water. After birth, the baby was subjected to a series of “developmental and hardening” procedures, as a result of which he refused the first breastfeeding and fell asleep deeply for 3 days... Now the boy is 8 months old, he is breastfed, he has never tried a nipple or artificial formula, he feeds on demand , at 6 months, pedagogical complementary feeding was introduced. But rehabilitation from the injury received during water birth (we are, after all, land creatures) and postpartum procedures is still ongoing. Despite repeated teaching of mother and baby how to properly attach to the breast, the mother regularly heals cracked nipples (which is also very often the result of relationships), and does not understand the behavior of her child, who does not let her go for a minute, even in his sleep. Maybe he is not yet sure that he is completely safe, or maybe he is afraid of repeating the sad experience. One can only guess about this.
The first conversation with Natasha about feeding and caring for the child took place when her daughter was 4 months old. The reason for the appeal was the active sucking of his fists and fingers. It turned out that the baby sleeps all night separately from her mother and does not wake up for feeding, and does not breastfeed often enough during the day (at the same time she pees a lot, which means she gets enough milk). Doesn't suck the pacifier. After long conversations and deliberations, the girl at 5 months was transferred to her mother’s bed, and feeding was established on demand. But the mother began to complain that even when sleeping together, her daughter actively sucked her fists at night and did not pay attention to her mother’s breast. By 6 months the child was given a pacifier, because... It was very difficult to remove the fingers from her mouth. Recently Natasha called and said that after sleep, when the girl wakes up, she does not call her mother. She lies and quietly cries. 10 minutes, 20, 30... Until mom accidentally looks into the room.
Reason No. 3 Large volume of introduced complementary foods, and a decrease in the child’s need to suckle at the breast. This is usually accompanied by the child’s habit of falling asleep without the breast or rare night feedings due to separate sleep from the mother.
Psychologists-perinatologists call the behavior of a child when refusing breastfeeding psycho-emotional deprivation (i.e. destruction of relationships). If a mother is unable to establish relationships at an early age, the consequences of this will manifest themselves many times throughout her later life.
Often, breast refusal is complicated by a lack of milk. In this case, measures to increase lactation are necessary.
A few rules if a child refuses to breastfeed:
1. Breast refusal is not a reason to stop breastfeeding;
2. The most common reason for breast refusal is the use of pacifiers, pacifiers and bottle feeding;
3. The mother’s actions in case of genuine breast refusal should be aimed at convincing the baby that the mother is a reliable person and is always ready to help;
4. When retraining a child, the mother needs competent assistance from a breastfeeding specialist, as well as support from relatives.
Galina Eltonskaya, scientific supervisor
Hyperlactation
The opposite story is hyperlactation. There is too much milk, the child does not have time to swallow it and may choke.
Solution: before giving the breast, express a little, this will reduce the pressure and make sucking easier. In addition, it is hind milk that is most useful, it is rich in proteins and fats necessary for growth and development, and is intended to satisfy hunger. Foremilk, which is more liquid, contains more water and carbohydrates (lactose), and is designed to quench thirst.
