The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog

A great video on latch.

Last year Ameda released a great video on getting a comfortable and effective latch.  Since this is really the heart of getting breastfeeding off to a good start, I thought it would be good to spread the word about it. 

The thing I like most about the video is that they show a mother starting with her baby skin to skin on her chest in a way that really lets you see the head-bopping...lunge instinct babies have.  The more I suggest that mothers try this, the more sold I am on starting in this position.  It's made a big difference in some cases, especially for babies who are refusing the breast.  Have you seen your baby do it?

The video also emphasizes the "asymmetrical latch" (without calling it that) which helps get the nipple into a comfortable spot.  Learning to help a baby latch this way has made a big difference for many moms I know, too.

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"Why I nurse at the mall...and at Mass."

Today I'm happy to share a guest post from Kate, a blogger and mother of two living in Georgia.  To the left is a 'nursing mom's eye view" of her daughter Rachel Marie.

When this piece was published on InsideCatholic.com, it got a pretty mixed response, and broke the record for comments on a post by a woman writer on that site! 

Please share what you think!  Do you nurse at your house of worship?

I'm a nursing mom and I'm not shy about it.  Being the mother of two milk mongers, as well as someone who embraces ecological breastfeeding as part of natural family planning, I have no problem feeding my children in public.  I'm a lot like Sam-I-Am's friend:  I'll nurse (discreetly) on a boat, with a goat (at a petting zoo), on a train or a plane, and a few places Dr. Seuss didn't think of.

In my family, we're movers and shakers and I'm not going to let the fact that I breastfeed keep us in when we'd rather be out.  Nor am I going to sequester my baby and me in a public bathroom when she's hungry and needs to eat.

But there's one place where I was reluctant to breastfeed.

With my first child, the idea of nursing at church made me uneasy and I felt about as modest as a Playboy centerfold.  I just couldn't get myself to do it.  Not surprisingly, Mass wasn't a very peaceful experience for me in those early months when my daughter Madeline was eating every couple of hours (or less in the case of my firstborn, who expected access to fast food 24 hours a day, give or take). Planning around her feedings was next to impossible.  Even as she grew older, she refused to take a pacifier and sought comfort at my breast frequently throughout the day.

So every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation and regular, old day I needed a taste of Jesus, I found myself in a pickle.  I didn't want to miss out on Mass, but I didn't feel that breastfeeding was something I should do at church.  What was a nursing mommy to do?

Thankfully, the Big Guy decided to help me out.  When Madeline was little over a year old, I was attending a church event when I noticed a woman nursing her toddler right there in the pew in front of me.  She was also the mother of the nine older children who filled th pew beside her.  As a newbie mom, I couldn't keep my eyes off this veteran.  I only pray she saw my look of admiration and didn't have me pegged as a boobophobe.  Actually, I don't think she noticed me or anything else other than her child and God.  This mom wowed me -- the way she was able to discreetly and comfortably feed her child and be present -- not just physically bit emotionally and spiritually present -- at the prayerful event.

When it came time for us to quietly pray, she shifted her child's position and knelt just like the rest of us with his body cradled against her own.  To me, there was nothing more beautiful than seeing this nursing mother provide nourishment to her little one with her own body in God's company.

This was an ah-ha moment for me.  I realized that if, as I strongly believed, nursing was a part of God's plan for helping mothers bond with their babies and a way of using my body the way He designed it to be used, then of all places, I should feel comfortable breastfeeding my children in God's home.  Christopher West, the Catholic author best known for his insightful commentary  on John Paul II's Theology of the Body, describes a nursing mother as "one of the most precious, most beautiful, and most holy of all possible images of woman."  So why should I feel ashamed nursing in church -- in the presence of the Most Holy Eucharist -- but not at the mall?  Do I believe that breasts are made to feed babies, or are they just meant to be squeezed into rhinestone-clad bras for surfers to ogle on the Internet?

Nowadays you'll find me nursing my baby at the mall, the library, the park, and at Mass.

As of yet, I've never heard any rude comments or noticed raised eyebrows or disgusted looks.  Really, I'm not sure if anyone other than fellow nursing moms can even tell I'm breastfeeding.  But if they can, I hope they will recognize this act for what it is -- an expression of love for my child.  And just as that loving mom of nine did for me, the image of me and my little nursling might inspire other moms to embrace breastfeeding without shame.

Reprinted with permission of InsideCatholic.com. 

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Do you work or volunteer in breastfeeding support? Sign up for Motherwear's breastfeeding professionals newsletter!

I'm happy to say that I'll soon be writing Motherwear's newsletter for breastfeeding support professionals!

If you are a lactation consultant, a La Leche League leader, a WIC breastfeeding peer counselor, a childbirth educator, a lactation counselor, or support breastfeeding moms in any other role, sign up for the newsletter to get information, free catalogs, and special promotions.  You can also request free catalogs for your clients when you sign up.

I promise that each newsletter will contain at least one giveaway, and since the newsletter will come out only once a season, I can also promise that it won't clog your inbox.

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Wordless Wednesday: Technology isn't always our friend.

Credit:  The History of the Feeding Bottle.

More breastfeeding ad campaigns.

A while back I posted about my favorite breastfeeding ad campaign, but I recently learned of two more that I think are great.

First, check out these great public service announcements from the Virginia Department of Health.  You'll need Quicktime or something like it to view them.

The first, called "Weight Loss," looks just like a Jenny Craig commercial at first, complete with giant pants.  I'm sure that this will ring true for some of you, and not for others. 

The second is my favorite.  It's called "Grandmother" and shows a grandmother talking about her daughter's commitment to breastfeeding.

One called "No Fever" emphasizes health benefits (to my mind, there are far more compelling ones to highlight, but that's okay) and the effect of overall health on school attendance.

Another, called "Free" highlights the financial cost of not breastfeeding.  Considering the current state of our economy, this is probably an even more compelling argument these days.

The final three pictures are the winners of a British contest held at an art school, sponsored by the charity Best Beginnings, a British charity devoted to break down inequalities in child health.  I think they're clever, eye-catching, and use humor really effectively.  You can see the video the students watched before designing their ads here.

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You never know.

We're moving today.  Our new house just a few miles away, but it feels like just as much work as when we moved across the country.  I'm going to be slow on email this weekend.

So things are a little crazy here at the moment, but I wanted to put up a post about something I've been thinking about a lot recently:

Whenever I see a baby being fed by bottle, I assume that the baby isn't breastfed.  It sparks a chain of questions about why the mother isn't breastfeeding:  Did she give it a try?  Did she hit a lot of problems and stop?  Was she under pressure from family not to breastfeed?  This goes on for a while in my head.

The other day I was talking to a mother who told me that her baby, now five months, is exclusively breastfed, "except for a few times when we were out in public and I just gave her a bottle of formula."  It occurred to me that if I saw her in public using a bottle I would have assumed that she wasn't breastfeeding.

Then I remembered being at a baby gathering at which I saw a mother give her baby a bottle.  I assumed that the bottle contained formula, and then realized that the bottle probably contained pumped milk.  This family had two moms, and the mother I saw was the non-birth mother, feeding her baby the birth mom's milk.

Then I thought of all of the mothers who exclusively pump.  This is going to sound strange, but I've seen so many different colors of breastmilk that I sometimes can't tell the difference between breastmilk and formula when it's in a bottle.  So some of those bottles I've seen may have contained breastmilk, too. 

So, is the moral "don't judge a breast by a bottle?"  What do you think?

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Should you store your milk in the office fridge?

On Sunday, the Boston Globe's etiquette column, "Miss Conduct," published a question about breastmilk in the workplace.  Read on, and then tell me what you think of the response.

Question:  A co-worker recently returned from maternity leave, and upon opening our office refrigerator today to grab my yogurt, I came face to face with a bottle of what appears to be breastmilk, labeled with this woman's name.  Although I breastfed my children and am an ardent supporter of it, I always took pains to be discreet about it at work.  If I pumped milk in the office, I stored it in a paper bag or small cooler so others wouldn't see it.  What's your take on this?  Should we all be exposed to her daily output of breastmilk every time we venture to the fridge?

Answer:  Your co-worker's behavior is seriously inappropriate, and I hope it can be attributed to the emotional upheaval of having to leave her baby the million-and-one things she must be trying to keep track of right now.  One does not store bodily fluids - even sacred, precious, life-sustaining bodily fluids - in containers where others might see.  Reasonable discretion and unreasonable body shame are not the same thing.  Look, you're uncomfortable about this, and you're a breastfeeding veteran; imagine how childless colleagues, male and female, would feel.  Worse yet, imagine a colleague both childless and clueless piping up at the morning staff meeting, "Hey Sue, I ran out of half-and-half.  Hope you don't mind I used some of your soy milk!"  This must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances.  I think you should address the matter with her, since you have lactation cred yourself, and she won't think you're a child- or body-hater.  Explain to her how you handled the situation for yourself, and why.

If I'm reading this right, Miss Conduct is not actually saying that the mother shouldn't store her milk in the fridge.  She's agreeing with the author of the question, who feels that it should be kept in a bag or cooler, presumably within the fridge.  There's an awful lot of "ew, gross" in the answer, but I guess that's to be expected. 

I never stored my milk in our office fridge.  It actually never occurred to me, since it kept cool just fine in the insulated cooler in my pump bag.  Frankly, I'd worry a whole lot more about other people's rotting sandwiches and year-old yogurt getting near my milk than anything else; the office fridges where I've worked have been pretty nasty.

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Massachusetts moms, please act now!

I'm a resident of Massachusetts, one of only three states that provides no legal protection for nursing in public.  There is some hope of that finally changing this year, but we need to act quickly.  Here's a notice put out by the Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition:

Massachusetts is one of only three states without any laws to protect a mother's right to breastfeed in public.  Senator Fargo's proposed bill 2438 is currently stuck in the House Ways and Means Committee and unless we can convince the Speaker of the House to move it out of committee immediately our chance of passing the bill this year.  Deadline is the end of July.

Speaker of the House

Salvatore F. Dimasi

State House

Room 356

State House

Boston MA 02133

On the back of the photo write "Another family for Senate Bill 2438!  Please send it to the floor for a vote!

That's it!  Any cute baby photo will do, whether it was taken two days ago or twenty years ago, and no, they don't have to be breastfeeding in the photo.  In fact, we'd rather they weren't.  If you do send a photo of your baby breastfeeding please make it discreet.  We want to flood these offices with pictures of cute babies, not breasts!

For those of you with the time and energy you get extra credit if you also send a photo/request to:

Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee

Rep. Robert DeLeo

Room 243

State House

Boston, MA 02133

You may also email email Rep. DiMasi, Rep. DeLeo, or your own representative an embedded photo, but not an attachment.  Keep the photo size small. 

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Pumping on campus.

Over the last year I've been working with a group of women to help get a lactation program set up at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 

Massachusetts doesn't (yet!) have a law requiring employers to accommodate breastfeeding employees, so part of the job is persuading people in leadership positions that this is a good idea.  I've noticed that sometimes it helps so show what other institutions are doing - it shows that this is considered important by peer institutions. 

So I did a little online digging to learn about lactation programs on large public university campuses.  What I found was really encouraging.

Lots of campuses offer places for mothers to pump.  Some are centrally organized, with online room scheduling and breastfeeding support on campus.  One even has a listserv to connect pumping mothers.  Some are a patchwork of spaces, with different rules for how they're used.  Many campuses provide hospital grade pumps in their pumping rooms, and some offer free or discounted pumping kits.

Here are a few examples:

• University of California, Davis:  26 pumping locations, each with a hospital grade pump. Support group and breastfeeding clinic on campus
• Ohio State University: 12 locations, all new construction plans will include lactation space
• University of Washington: 8 pumping locations, hospital grade pumps in each

To see more examples, including links to the program websites, here's a link to the chart (Word doc) I made with what I found.  I was looking for institutions comparable with the University of Massachusetts, so it doesn't include any information on smaller colleges or universities. Feel free to use it to advocate for lactation accommodations on your campus!  And here's a great free toolkit from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to get the conversation started.

Do you work or study on a college or university campus?  Leave a comment telling us how it works for you!  

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TV show seeks mothers who are cross nursing, researcher seeks mothers who have induced lactation.

A national magazine and a national television show (now doesn't that make you curious?) are working on a piece about cross nursing, and are looking for moms to interview.  A while back I wrote about watching a similar segment on a morning show at the dentist's office waiting room, and the brief conversation that ensued.   

I have to admit that I always get a little nervous when I hear about a TV show focusing on some facet of the breastfeeding experience which is a little less mainstream, but I've been told that the piece will be respectful.  Here are the details:

A national parenting magazine and a national morning show are teaming up on a story about cross-nursing that will air later this month, and they're looking for moms who would be interested in sharing their experiences on camera.  If you are currently cross-nursing - breastfeeding a friend or relative's baby - please email with a short description of your cross-nursing experiences and a phone number where you can be reached by the producer of this segment.  No travel would be required for the interview - a camera crew would visit your home to tape the piece. 

And Lenore of the website Ask Lenore, is looking for individuals who have induced lactation for her doctoral research.  Lenore's website is a fantastic resource for mothers who want to induce lactation:

Individuals who have induced lactation within the last three years are being sought to participate in a study being conducted by Lenore Goldfarb, B. Comm., B. Sc., Dip. C., IBCLC, for her doctoral research. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the practices and outcomes of women who followed a protocol or procedure to induce lactation to provide breastmilk to their baby and the experiences they have had. Study participants would complete an internet-based survey.  Contact Lenore for more information.

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