Hello, [friends. 00:00:00] So today I want to do a video about my best breastfeeding
tips and advice. I just filmed a video about my breastfeeding story, so I will link that
down below if you want to hear a bit more background, but this really is just the tips
that I've learned along the way. I have two boys and I ended up breastfeeding for a year
each. So I feel like, obviously, it was successful, and I learned a lot along the way, so I would
like to pass that on. I was feeling really apprehensive about doing a video about breastfeeding
tips, but I just feel like if this video helps one person, then it was worth making.
First tip, and probably the most important one is, make sure that your latch is correct.
I didn't really know a lot about the latch, I just assumed breastfeeding was like a baby
sucking that area. I'll link a video down below. It's like an NHS video of how to latch
correctly. And I watched it before I had a baby, when I was pregnant, and I felt like
it really did help me get the latch correct.
Basically, and this is obviously my normal technical medical stuff, you want to put as
much of your boob as you can in your baby's mouth. It's not just the nipple. Like, as
much as you can get in it so that the baby is biting down on your breast rather than
sucking. If you see a sucking, you really don't want to see that. You want to see a
biting. Your nipple is rubbing against the top of their mouth, that is going to hurt
you. Whereas if your nipple is sitting at the back of their throat, that is where you
want it to be so that nothing's rubbing and the milk is going right into their mouth.
I don't know if this is too TMI, but it's just the most important thing in your breastfeeding.
Second tip is to make sure you drink plenty of water. This is so important. It's important
anyway, but when you have a baby, if you drink water afterwards like that, it's going to
heal you. But drinking water when you're breastfeeding is so important because obviously you're not
only feeding yourself, you're now feeding this person all this liquid. So you need to
drink all of it, as much as you can.
Also, I buy big, big bottles of water. I bought them when I was pregnant and I hid them around
the house. Basically under the baby chair in his room, I had about six bottles all lined
up underneath. And then in our couch, I used to hide them in the corners. My husband, he
used to be like, what are you doing? Because I just know that if you've got a screaming
baby and toddler or whatever it is and you need to go sit in breastfeed, you don't really
always have time to get a pint of water as well. There's not much you can do when you're
breastfeeding, you can't get up and walk around. But I do that, and then when I did sit down
to breastfeed and I had forgotten to bring water, I could just then drink it. And I just
always made sure that I was drinking when he was drinking.
... important to keep up your food. I went from being someone who was so hungry when
I was pregnant and hangry if I hadn't eaten to this person who, as soon as I had the baby,
my appetite sort of went. I wasn't bothered about food, and I don't know if it was because
I was so tired or thinking about other things, but I just was not that bothered about food.
And luckily, my mom and husband were excellent in my getting food in and helping me in the
early days. My mom was here for the first three weeks of both boys. When I was breastfeeding,
she would always bring me a drink and a snack and she'd be like, you look after him and
I'll look after you.
It's really important to have snacks in. Get your husband to bring danishes home and hot
cross buns and, you know, fatty things to just get a bit more into you. So you only
need another 500 calories a day, but you do need another 500 calories a day. So don't
overeat, but doing enough for your baby. I also used to eat a kind of fattier snack around
5:00 p.m. One midwife said to me that if you eat a danish or something a little bit fatty
around 5:00 p.m., that that fat will be in your night feed at 7:00. So it was a way of
sort of fattening up that milk for 7:00.
So the next tip is don't watch the clock. With my first son, I used to have all these
breastfeeding apps on my phone and I used to panic. I used to sit down to breastfeed
and I would press them and check how many minutes you've fed for and how many hours
it had been. And I'd be like, no, no, it's only two hours, you're not ready for another
feed. But then he maybe would be having a growth spurt or something. So I would say
just don't watch the clock. Because with my second son, I didn't really have time to watch
the clock, so I just didn't. But it was so much easier. It was just kind of like, I fed
on demand in the early days. And I'd feed him and then I just would stop, and I wasn't
stressing about-
One little tip that I found when I was breastfeeding, because my... For the larger breasted women
out there, oh my God, this is so too TMI. Basically, my boobs when I was pregnant, they
were big. But when I was breastfeeding, they were another level huge. So they say that
when you're 38 weeks pregnant, you go and get your chest measured, and then get a size
above that. But I did that, and it was still not big enough. So anyway, they were huge.
So nipple pads never really worked for me. They would slide around. I had a few really
embarrassing times where I was wearing gray, and I love wearing gray, and the pad had slipped
and then it was, like, this big black patch of wet. So it was just so embarrassing. One
little tip in the end was, if you buy the ultra thin sanitary towels, put a big strip
of glue at the back, in the big sticky strip at the back. Put that in your bra. They don't
slide around. They're massive. Nothing's going to get lost. They're really absorbent. It's
just such a good tip for me.
Third one is support. Support is so important in the way of a breastfeeding pillow or a
chair. Chair is like, whatever kind of chair you have, you need a chair. When Fraser was
born, we moved when he was three weeks old, and we moved to a new house. We had no furniture
sometimes when we were here. I used to use the stairs as a place to breastfeed. Don't
do that. Get a chair. Wherever you're going, you need to have a chair. You need a chair
in the ladies' room to breastfeed. There's lovely ones you can get out there. You don't
really need a fancy one, I've got one from IKEA.
I also had a breastfeeding pillow. I don't have it on me now, I gave it to my sister.
But it's called the My Brest Friend pillow. And I just love the name as well. It's quite
expensive. It was 45 pounds from John Lewis, but it goes right around you. And when they're
really tiny, I found it quite helpful to support them, and gets them to the exact right place
they need to be. And I just, I really loved having that.
I also took supplements, I took the Vitabionics Pregnacare supplements. I took the Pregnacare
supplements throughout my pregnancy, and then I took the breastfeeding ones for when I was
breastfeeding. So I haven't gone any on me now because I stopped breastfeeding, but I'll
show you a picture. Got omega-3 in them and all good stuff for your baby and for your
milk. So I would definitely recommend taking that as well.
So buy nice bras. Breastfeeding is so frumpy. All the maternity bras you get are really
unattractive, and you feel like blah anyway after you've had a baby. The last thing you
need is to also look like your launch rate is gross and that you're a cow because you're
being milked. Elle Macpherson do really nice bras. Figleaves do really nice bras. H&M do
really nice maternity bras for a bit of a lower end. So I would say treat yourself.
You're saving all this money on formula, get some nice breastfeeding bras.
... that I really want to say is to relax. And that is easier said than done. But it's
just so important for you to relax. If you're breastfeeding, try not to worry about work
or argue with your husband or... Just as much as you can, relax. Just do. Because it really
does help with the milk flow.
I know that some people would say a really big tip is to express, but I can't say much
on that because I never really got on with expressing. I had an amazing expressor, it
was the Avent electrical expressing machine thing, and it's really, really good. But I
just never got the hang of it. We were living in a building site the first time and the
second time I had a toddler. So I just never really got around, I just completely breastfed.
How you know that your baby is getting enough is, if they're putting on weight, they're
thriving. They're looking for, after you've breastfed, the whole milk drunk thing, they
are pretty satisfied. Poohing twice a day, normally that beautiful yellow stuff in the
early days. Yeah, as long as all those things are happening and they're content, you know,
they're not screaming all the time, you can feel good, that obviously they getting enough.
Because obviously with breastfeeding, you don't know how much they're getting. But as
long as they are putting on weight and seeming like they're satisfied, then you're doing
great.
So yes, I hope these tips were useful. I know that there's loads of other tips out there,
but these were just my tips. Thank you so much for watching, and don't forget to subscribe
if you want any other money and beauty and stuff videos. And I'll see you all soon.
Oh, I feel like this was a little bit TMI. I don't know if I should have done that video.
Oh well.