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Home › Articles › Your Growing Baby › Straight Talk About Real Babies

Straight Talk About Real Babies

Defining New-mom Expectations

By Ann Calandro, BSN, RNC, IBCLC

Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  

It's no wonder that new mothers are confused about breastfeeding. What opportunity do they have to understand real breastfeeding babies, not the pretend ones on TV or the fictional ones in stories? Not the formula-fed infant of their neighbor.

Let's see. On TV, infants are mostly upstairs in their cribs, sleeping peacefully while Mom lives her life largely unchanged downstairs. In stories they are much the same, sleeping 22 out of 24 hours a day, peacefully eating and cooing the rest of the time.

The Formula Effect

In our culture, mothers have been accustomed to babies who are formula fed, who behave very differently from babies who eat naturally. Formula is an artificial food, and it causes babies to act in artificial ways. Babies who drink formula receive in very short order a large amount of liquid that is very difficult to digest. After a formula bottle and a few big burps, babies sleep for several hours before they feel hungry again. Hmm... This sounds very nice; Mom can get lots of things done. Perhaps.

However, inside, Baby is dealing with an unnatural food that is very hard to digest and takes a very long time to move out of his stomach. In any case, many new mothers have come to accept that this is the way their own baby will behave. Not so with breast milk.

Breast milk is natural and digests very quickly – usually within two hours. Therefore, breastfed babies eat often. In the early weeks, they may eat eight to 20 times a day – or more. It depends.

As a lactation consultant, I frequently hear moms say, "Well I tried to breastfeed my first child but they always wanted to eat, and my milk could never fill them up like formula did. They were always hungry." Get it? The formula makes them feel very full, but is that good for them? Not really. Formula is deficient in all immunological properties.


Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  

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Re: THANK YOU! by anonymous on 05/27/2009 05:41PM

Thank you for this! I found myself nodding in agreement the whole time! I have to continuously defend these practices to family and others, and then they are surprised at how happy and healthy my baby is! All I keep hearing is that my baby is spoiled b/c I pick her up when she cries and I let her sleep in my room (Btw, she sleeps happily most of the night). I'm also told my breast milk is no good and I need to formula feed because my baby seems hungry more often. I'm sending this article to every new mother I know!

Re: thank you by thank you by christine on 02/19/2009 08:34PM

Thank you so much! I am a new mom. This is my first child and you turned me around so I didn't make a mistake. I am breastfeeding and I was so stressed out because I was following the two, three hour feedings time but she was crying so much. Well now I know and I know that my baby will be fine now. Thank you.

Kudos by Bren on 02/04/2009 05:04PM

This is such a great article! Every new mom should read it. I don't know how many women I've heard say their baby just wasn't getting enough to eat because they were crying all the time. This spells it all out and helps people understand what is normal behavior in a breastfed baby vs. a formula-fed baby.

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