One of the perks of being an IBM employee is a program with LactCorp which allows me access to a Lactation consultant for 6 months after birth. This includes unlimited phone calls to a consultant. Yesterday I decided to call in and see what it was about. I’m so glad I did! I got lots of great advice and cleared up a few wives tales. Here’s some interesting facts I learned:
- It’s okay to wake up a sleeping baby. “They wake you up, it’s okay to wake them up… especially if it makes life easier on you by getting them on the same schedule”
- Stress does not affect milk production
- Breastfeeding mom’s only feel “full” for the first month or so after giving birth. Even though you don’t feel full, there is plenty of milk.
- There is no correlation to the amount of fluids a mother drinks and her milk supply.
- Almost all babies have fussy periods. It’s usually around 6 weeks old.
- What you eat does not affect whether or not your baby has gas.
- Pumping does NOT increase your milk supply. In order to trick your body into thinking you have another baby you’d need to pump 8x more a day. Your body produces milk based on the “pulls” and draining of the breast. That’s why milk typically slows down around 6 months since that’s when solids are introduced and less pulling is happening. Since a newborn typically eats 8+ times a day that’s why it’d take 8 extra times to increase the supply.
Tummy on Mummy
My tandem breast feeding attempts so far have been in the football hold. One thing the consultant suggested was to lay on my back and let the boys find my nipples to nurse that way. That position makes it so that I don’t have to pull their heads up to my breasts or support their body weight.
Bottom two photos:
There was even a video: http://www.biologicalnurturing.com/video/bn3clip.html. We gave it a try last night and it worked amazingly well. Since it’s just Steve and I now at night, this hold made it a lot easier feeding both babies at once.
My consultant, Nancy, said that I was in the top 5% for multiple moms. She was impressed that I was exclusively breastfeeding the twins.
It makes me feel good to get some expert advice and reassurance that the boys are getting everything they need.