Do you have to breastfeed in order to bond with your baby?

No

Is it easier to bond with your baby if you breastfeed? 

Yes

Why?

1. Breastfeeding makes mothers release oxytocin which makes you feel loved up and happy.  It’s what makes you want to gaze into your baby’s eyes while he’s feeding.  It’s what makes you want to touch his feet and stroke his hair.

2. Breastfeeding means instant skin-to-skin contact.  How much skin-to-skin contact would you have with your baby if you didn’t breastfeed?  Way, way less.  Skin-to-skin contact also causes the involved parties to release oxytocin.

3. If you breastfeed responsively, you tend to stay near to your baby for most of his early life so it’s easier to learn how to read your baby’s cues and moods.

So how else can you do this if you don’t breastfeed (or if you’re a father/grandmother/sister/brother/etc., not a mother!)?

1. Lots of skin-to-skin contact - if you let Dad’s job be bathing baby but tell him he has to get in the bath with the baby, that’s a wonderful way for Dads to bond.

2. Spend lots of time close to the baby - carry him in a sling as often and for as long as you can.  And co-sleep with your baby.  If you sleep next to your baby you up the contact time by about 10 hours a day!

Why doesn’t it make it easier for Dads/Grandparents to bond with their babies if they can feed them formula milk or expressed breastmilk from a bottle?

Because the bonding that happens during breastfeeding has nothing to do with the action of putting milk into the baby and everything to do with closeness and hormones.

Why does this man think that he needs to cut the cord in order to bond with his baby?

Because he’s bonkers?  I have never seen any research linking cord-cutting to bonding.  I have seen research linking early skin-to-skin contact between a father and his newborn baby with bonding.  It also helps with encouraging early feeding behaviour and helps the baby to regulate his temperature, heart and respiratory rate and his hormones.  This man shouldn’t be having a go at the hospital for not letting him cut the cord, but should be ensuring that they’ll let him take his shirt off and cuddle the baby the minute he’s born.  Even better than that, he should be campaigning for there to be double (or at least twin) beds in each room and for policies that allow the father to stay the night with his new family.  If he’s that worried about bonding then they should have their baby at home - way better chance of bonding at home than in the harsh environment that is a hospital.

If a cave-baby senses that his mother is no longer around, and neither are any other adults - can’t smell her, can’t hear her, can’t feel her skin next to his, isn’t latched onto the breast - his body puts him into a stress situation. His body instinctively knows that if he doesn’t get to another adult soon he may get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger. Stress hormones race around his body and all his energies are focussed towards getting a human’s attention - he screams and screams and screams. If no adult comes, then he is more likely to survive if he shuts up and stops letting all the sabre-toothed tigers know where he is and that he’s alone so he stops crying. The stress hormones remain racing around his body until another adult human, preferably his mother, picks him up and holds him close. Even then he may need at least skin-to-skin contact or even to suckle at the breast in order for his body to truly believe that he’s now safe and to settle down on the stress hormones.

We are still giving birth to stone-age babies. They haven’t had enough time to evolve to live in our new world where they can be safe away from their parents and the stress hormones can do damage to their developing brains. As they get older and they learn about emotions - smiling, responding to other humans, a sense of humour, frustration - how these emotions are dealt with by the baby’s main care-givers can shape how they cope with emotions their entire life. Big feelings of dissapointment, frustration etc. are less likely to lead to uncontrollable rage if adults help them to dissipate the unpleasant hormones causing them ie. if adults don’t leave them screaming, saying ‘just ignore him, he’s just attention seeking’. He’s not seeking attention, he’s desperately seeking the help he needs to re-organise his feelings - he can’t do it on his own until he’s spent many years being helped to do so by a loving adult.

I don’t do very much in the way of journal-type blogging but suddenly feel an urge to, so here goes!

This morning we went to our NCT toddler group.  It’s held in a children’s centre and a lot of my non-HE friends go there with their children who our children get on very well with so we all look forward to it.  The first part of this morning was very hellish indeed, though.  I have this totally irrational need for the girls to both get dressed first thing in the morning.  It’s partly because leaving anywhere, including our home, with three young children is hard work, but having one or more to dress first as well just makes it a nightmare, so if they’re all dressed before we start the day, then that’s less stress for me when it comes time to leave the house.  Mopsy, however, has recently decided that she doesn’t want to get dressed in the mornings and that she would rather stay in her nightclothes all day.  This is really, really stressing me out.  It’s fine on the days that we have no morning appointments because we can just stay upstairs playing and find a way to make a game out of getting dressed.  Those mornings go very pleasantly.  But when we have morning plans and I don’t have enough time to faff around with creative ways of dressing stubborn toddlers everything just goes to pot.  And stubborn really is the best way to describe her.  When she decides she doesn’t want to do something, she just will not do it, and she’ll refuse to do everything else I suggest to boot, just because I’ve suggested it!  She really cuts off her nose to spite her face, suddenly deciding she doesn’t want to go to the toddler group or to do whatever else she’s been very excited about doing. 

What I *should* have done is just collected together Mopsy’s clothes and taken them with us in the car, in the hope she’ll at least get dressed when we get there and, if she didn’t, just gritted my teeth against any strange looks at my be-nightied toddler (which was DH’s sensible and rational suggestion when I rang him in hysterical tears).  However, what I did instead was to get crosser and crosser until I ended up physically forcing her into her clothes in an absolute rage that her stubbornness would mean that all of us would be late to, or even absent from, something that *all* of the rest of us wanted to go to (including her).  She was crying, I was crying and Flopsy was running around being all sweetness and light as siblings are wont to be when one of them is messing around.  Then Cotton-tail did a poo in her nice clean nappy and spilt chocolate milkshake all over her clean clothes.  And Mopsy kept defiantly taking her left sock off.  And I ended up lying on the floor wailing and despairing at her stubbornness and defiance but mostly at my own completely crap and shit and terrible handling of the situation so that it spiralled so out of control that I behaved in a way that I feel is one of the crappest way of parenting.  Bizarrely she was more than happy for me to put her shoes on, just not her clothes. 

We got out in the end and I drove to the group crying and wondering how on earth I was going to compose myself before I got there.  I managed to look not too blotchy-faced when we got in but one of my friends said ‘Hi Clare, how are you?’.  ‘Not very good this morning’ I replied and burst into tears.  My friends were wonderful and helpful, despite not really subscribing to the non-coercive way I *try* to parent so not really understanding why I was beating myself up so much.  One reminded me how I’d described how I’d had to get through a couple of weeks of non-stop tv when I first stopped limiting it, until they started to self-regulate it, and suggested I just let Mopsy wear what she wanted and grit my teeth about the irritation it causes in me in the hope she’ll get it out of her system.  I think I’m going to have to do this, and just keep my fingers crossed that I don’t get too many strange looks.  

What made me also furious, though, was myself.  The fact that I was putting social norms above the needs of my child.  I was being awful to my baby just to make her conform!  What is the matter with me???  I’m the queen of not-conforming!  Why do I have such a bloody block over this getting dressed thing!  What is the worst thing that will happen if she goes out in her nightie?  She’ll get odd looks, and she’ll get cold.  So I ignore the looks and feel proud of my self-assured little girl; and I take spare clothes and warm over-clothes for her to wear when she gets cold.  I *know* all this in my head, but I have such a problem putting it into practice.  I need to write myself some posters to put up round the house reminding me not to be such a control freak and to stop seriously not taking my children seriously!

Anyway, moving on from this rather miserable start, once I stopped crying at the toddler group, I really started to enjoy it and the girls were happy the minute I got them in the car to go there, so they were fine.  After the toddler group, we drove home and rang my very good (HE) friend (who we had planned to visit that afternoon) to ask if we had agreed to eat lunch with her and if not, to say we’d be late as we hadn’t yet eaten.  She said she’d happily feed us, so I gathered up wellies in case we went to the park, and we drove off again to her house.  Another good friend (also HE) was going to join us there too with her children.  The afternoon was lovely.  Sometimes when we visit this friend, our youngest three children rub eachother up the wrong way, but having the extra children there kind of diluted the atmosphere a bit so it was much calmer.  And the extra adult made a difference in terms of protecting Cotton-tail.  My friend reads this blog so I have to be nice about her.  Ha ha, only joking, K.  Honestly, we love meeting up with this friend, and happily our children mostly get on really well too.  It’s only that on occassion the younger ones clash because they haven’t yet gained the ability to not lash out when they lose their temper.  Myself and the other vistor took some of the children to the playground at one point, while our host made cakes with Mopsy and her two youngest - Flopsy watched the tv (very sociable!).  Then when we got back it was time to leave and we came home.

When we got in, I checked my emails while Flopsy and Mopsy played some very inventive game which involved making it all dark in the living room, and pretending to go to bed.  But they also had to jump of sofas, or something, and Mopsy hurt herself at one point.  Then Mopsy saw an empty tray similar to the ones we keep the playdough in and asked to get the playdough out.  I told her that Flopsy knew where it was and to ask her if she’d do it, which she was more than happy to do.  And DH came home to both girls playing happily with playdough, making ‘ice-cream’, and Cotton-tail crawling round the floor screeching as she is wont to do.  I’ve done an hour’s shift on the breastfeeding helpline, and we’ve had supper, and the girls are watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  I wonder when they’ll go to bed…

Two big things have happened in our family.  Mopsy has weaned, with very little encouragement from me.  And Cotton-tail is walking!  At 9 3/4 months!  What is going on???  She’s very wobbly, and looks very drunk, taking one step and then waiting to balance, then another one, then plopping down on her cloth-nappied bottom.  Feels a bit less pleasant when nappy-free but doesn’t seem to bother her.  She’s very cute, particularly as she’s so small to be walking!

Children’s learning

I’ve had various analogies in my head over the years, with regard to children’s learning and knowledge.  The one I’ve had for the longest is that of an ice-berg.  Any parent will relate to the experience of a child coming out with something that you respond to with ‘how on earth do you know that?’.  Whatever a child chooses to let us see of their knowledge, I am certain that there is way, way more there that we will never know about and, in my opinion, have no right to know about.  That knowledge belongs to the child and they can tell us about it if they wish.  On a bit of a tangent, I do feel that enforced testing is a real infringement on a child’s rights to their own knowledge - like invading their minds - unless, of course, a child has chosen to be tested in order to gain a qualification or certificate to prove their knowledge.

The analogy that has been forming in my head lately is that of rare wild animals.  We know they’re there, but, in an ideal world, we don’t know the details and we leave them well alone unless they come out of their own accord for us to observe them from a distance.  Or if we leave food out for them during the winter, they might venture out to eat it.  What happens when we actively interfere with the natural living of wild animals?  Well, they often get ill.  Sometimes they get too frightened to continue reproducing.  If we disturb nests some animals and birds will abandon their young.  Even if we’re interfering with the best of intentions, we can seriously upset the delicate balance of their lives which can have disasterous results.  Is this what children’s learning and knowledge is like?  It’s there, going on all the time, without our interference.  Just happening.  Every now and then a child needs help from someone more experienced and asks for it.  Or sometimes the knowledge just pops its head up for us to see - what a privelege!  But when we interfere without invitation, who knows what we’re doing to it.

We should just be here as providers of opportunities and as signposts to our children, and nothing else.  We should offer them experiences, allow them the chance to discover interests - easy to do with television and the internet being so accessible nowadays, and fun to do with trips to museums/castles/whatever, and cosy and loving to do by sharing books and magazines.  We should be open to them deciding not to do the things we suggest.  And we should be available to our children to answer their questions and signpost them to other ways of learning about things that interest them. 

Finding the happy medium that means we’re doing what our children need us to do but not interfering beyond that is easier said than done, but it’s a standard to aim for

When Flopsy was demanding that Dh do things for her once ages ago, I jokingly said ‘Poor Daddy - you can’t ask him to do all that!  Only women can do two things at once’.  It seemed to really stick with her, though.  Once or twice it’s backfired on me when I’ve said in exasperation ”hold your horses, Flopsy!  One thing at a time” and she’s responded with “but you’re a woman, you can do more than one thing at a time!”, perfectly seriously.

Last night when I was getting trying to get Mopsy to sleep, Dh told me that Flopsy had been playing on the computer. 

Flopsy:  Daddy, can you get me a chocolate milkshake?…Daddy, can you push me in?…Daddy, can you turn the sound up?

Daddy:  Hang on, Flopsy.  Give me a chance!

Flopsy:  Oh sorry Daddy, I thought you were a woman!

…in feeling an unpleasant lump come to my throat when I read or hear about how children have to be dragged screaming from their parents to be taken into nursery or school and then to have that described as normal and ‘for their own good’

Breastfeeding

A healthy newborn baby knows how to breastfeed.  He is expecting to spend the first few days lying on his mother’s tummy skin-to-skin.  He knows that if he doesn’t feel right, nine times out of ten, suckling will sort it out.  He instinctively starts to sniff to smell where his comfort is.  The little raised dots on the areola secrete a substance that smells like amniotic fluid - the first thing he ever smelt as he took his first breath and inhaled what was coming off his skin.  He starts opening and closing his mouth to see if the n ipple is close enough and if it isn’t, he starts to bob his head up and down, using his feet to push him up if he needs to move up, and using his hands to move him sideways if he needs to move sideways.  When he finds the n ipple, he comes in chin first, as he will have to reach up for it.  His tongue will come out over his bottom lip.  He will take more of the ‘chin side’ of his mother’s areola into his mouth than the ‘nose side’.  The n ipple will go far into his mouth.  He always takes a good mouthful because everytime he lifts his head and opens his mouth, gravity pulls his head down quickly, before he closes his mouth again.  After a day or two of this, he and his mother start to experiment with other positions.  They both know what it feels like when he’s latched on well and they both know what they’re doing.

For some reason, in our culture, we only allow babies to feed like this for the first feed they do post-birth.  Then mother has to ‘learn’ how to do it sitting up or lying on her side.  Her baby does the same things.  He sniffs and tries to move around when he wants to suckle but he has to wait for his mother to pick him up and undo her clothing so he’s already a bit miffed by the time he gets anywhere near the b reast.  Sometimes he’s already crying and if he’s brought to the b reast with a mouth wide-open from crying, his tongue is up on the roof of his mouth and nowhere near the right place to be able to breastfeed.  His mother is told to hold his head.  This means that he (a) can’t move it around enough and (b) tries to push back against it as he has a strong reflex to flex his neck when the back of his head is touched.  If his mother’s been told to hold him so that his head isn’t being touched, at least he has free movement.  It’s likely she’s been told to hold him ‘nose-to-n ipple’ which is helpful as it makes him have to reach up for the n ipple, but of course he’d be doing that naturally if he were being fed naturally.  His mother’s probably also been told to ‘wait for the gape’ - to wait until his mouth is open wide - and then to bring him onto her b reast swiftly.  Of course mums are not as fast as gravity so usually the baby’s mouth is closing as he reaches the b reast and he only takes a small amount of b reast into his mouth. 

If he is lying on his mother, skin-to-skin, for prolonged periods of time, a baby will snack, very frequently, and doze.  He’ll get plenty of colostrum.  He won’t get too full or too hungry - he’ll be just right the whole time.  If the baby gets put down and only fed when he cries, he’ll get hungry, then full, hungry, then full repeatedly.  It’s unsettling and his heart rate and breathing rate won’t be very stable.  He may not get enough milk to keep his blood sugars up and he may get sleepy and drowzy and his cues to feed will come further and further apart which leads to even lower blood sugars and the risk of dehydration. 

Everytime we interfere with the natural interaction between a mother and her baby, we risk creating problems that can have dire consequences or at least will make the early post-natal period pretty stressful and painful.

Note:  Apologies for writing anatomical words with a space in the middle, but some freaky site has picked up on the post because of the word ‘n ipple’.

There is so much to rant about with regard to this series.  However, as I don’t have much time now as my bed beckons, the thing I want to rant about the most tonight is the continuum concept mum with the ‘colicky’ baby who only calmed on being at the b reast and seemed to want to feed continuously.  This baby was not colicky, he was not attaching well at the b reast!  Lots of babies feed frequently in the early weeks.  It’s physiologically normal because babies often don’t feel ‘right’ (cold/lonely/tummy ache/hungry/frightented) and breastfeeding ‘cures’ most of those problems.  However, if you have a baby that is feeding frequently and his mother is finding breastfeeding painful then it is very, very likely that he isn’t latching on well enough and is having to feed more frequently in order to get enough milk over 24 hours. 

That mother was wincing as she leant into her baby to feed him - it hurt her.  If breastfeeding hurts, then baby isn’t latching on well enough no matter what it looks like.  If I had a pound for every mother who’s told me ‘it hurts, but I know he’s latched on ok because the midwife/health visitor say so’ I’d be a rich woman.  It doesn’t matter what it looks like.  It matters what it feels like.  If a baby is latched on well, no matter how often the baby feeds, or for how long, it won’t hurt.  I can’t re-iterate it enough because this is not just an issue of mothers’ n ipples.  Mothers sometimes say to me ‘I’ll just perservere through the pain’, which is very noble but ill-advised.  Babies who aren’t latching on well are not just damaging their mothers’ n ipples but are likely to not be removing the milk effectively which means they may not be getting enough, that they are not stimulating their mothers’ milk supplies enough and that they may not be draining their mothers’ b reasts enough which can cause problems like blocked ducts and mastitis. 

So the continuum concept mum who had a ‘colicky’ baby probably would have solved all her crying baby’s problems by getting some good breastfeeding help (ie. not the continuum concept mentor who appears to know very little about breastfeeding support) and getting her baby latched on well.  In addition, by not doing so, she risks her baby not getting enough milk; her n ipples never being comfortable while breastfeeding; problems with blocked ducts and mastitis; and her milk supply dropping over the next few weeks.  Please, anyone who is breastfeeding or knows someone breastfeeding, who is reading this:  Don’t put up with sore n ipples or any other signs that a baby isn’t latching on well!  Get help, and get good help asap!  Please!  That’s all. 

Birthing your baby. 

Childbirth shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.  Women who are lucky enough to be undisturbed during labour naturally shut off the part of their brain which deals with conscious thought and which also registers pain.  If this is allowed to happen, the massive cramps that the uterus makes still hurt, but you don’t care about it - it doesn’t bother you as much.  You’re high and spaced out. 

In our culture we don’t leave labouring women alone - we talk to them; make them labour in brightly lit rooms; interrupt their labour to examine them or move them into hospital.  Every time a labouring woman is spoken to, she has to re-awaken her conscious brain to respond and it starts hurting again.  She gets frightened which interrupts her normal hormonal cascade and makes it hurt more and take longer.  The longer it takes and the more anxious the mother is, the more dangerous birth becomes.  This makes it more likely the mother will need medical intervention…and so on and so forth. 

If we just left labouring women well alone and let them tell us when something wasn’t right (which they’d know because they would be listening to their instincts) way more babies would be born naturally and way less women would find labour as painful as most western women find it.  That’s why IMO women who have ‘natural’ births are seen as such martyrs - it really, really hurts if you do natural (ie. medication-free) birthing and your conscious brain is switched on.  If you’re in that much pain, you get frightened.  It’s a very unpleasant experience and not nearly as positive as natural birth is purported to be. 

Those women who have good natural birth experiences were probably lucky enough to be enabled to get to ‘labourland’ - to switch their subconscious brain off.  This is why freebirthing is becoming more popular (birthing without a midwife in attendance) - you don’t get disturbed.  I’d be scared of freebirthing because sometimes things do go wrong and you need someone who knows what they’re doing.  The ideal would be to have a traditional midwife - someone who just sits on their hands in the next room and only helps when asked to. 

This is why I (who has had one birth with no pain relief whatsoever - a purely ‘natural’ birth) would recommend to a mother hoping for a natural birth with the presence of a midwife to consider using entonox if they are finding it difficult to switch off her conscious brain.  Some mothers will be able to get there themselves but if you can’t, labour is such agony.  If gas and air helps you space out, then go for it - you’ll end up less frightened, less ‘pushy’ and hopefully with a birth much closer to what it’s meant to be like naturally.