Thursday, August 28, 2008

Cross-Nursing

Amazing Blog Link about babies nursing http://blog.thenatureschild.com/2008/08/human-mama-breastfeeds-calf.html Read this article about Cross-Nursing. Amazing. It shows a woman "breastfeeding" a calf. It basically points out, why give your baby cow's milk when cow's make milk for baby cows. Formula is usually cow-milk based...It also points out that less than 1 percent of women can actually NOT breastfeed due to physical limitations. A big problem that often comes up are usually separation from the baby, like at birth from problems or a C-Section. This makes the milk take longer to come in, and people freak out that the baby is losing weight. Our own pediatrician only breastfeed her 3 girls for all of 1 week each. She said "I just couldn't make enough milk." Well, duh!

Her milk probably never came in because she was supplementing, using bottles too early, and/or pacis...I should ask her next time I go in. Very nice lady otherwise. The other problem, it seems, is that women go back to work before their milk supply fully comes in. At one BF support group meeting, a gal was there with a 3 week old baby and had been back to work for a week already. Her sitter was supplementing with formula because she couldn't make enough milk. Duh. You're still healing from a physical process...birth. The milk supply is not even fully established until 6-8 weeks. That's why babies have to nurse so much in the early weeks!

So I thought this article was very interesting! Tell me what you think.

No comments: