Hi everyone, I am Melissa and welcome to CloudMom.com.
This show is part of a two-part series I'm doing for breastfeeding mothers on supplementing.
And we're asking the question, can it actually be helpful in certain circumstances to supplement
with formula, or, can supplementing with formula actually be harmful to breastfeeding.
So we'll be getting into the nitty-gritty on that.
And this show is really about those first days in the hospital.
It's proposed to us that your baby gets a little bit of formula for one reason or another,
will this hurt breastfeeding?
And I'm just gonna be sharing my own personal experiences and then a recent article I read
by a friend of mine actually who is a great reporter, Alice Gomstyn.
We're gonna talk about what she sets forth in her article.
Okay, so quickly let's to just talk about my own experiences, if you watch in my shows
you'll know that I did breastfeed five babies exclusively on average to about 18 months.
And I was like insane in the hospital when it came to the issue of giving my baby formula.
I had heard all these nightmare stories about like nurses, advertising breastfeeding and
giving formula to babies and nipple confusion.
I was just terrified and when I had my first baby, I read that nurse, the riot act I'm
like, "Don't go near my baby with formula."
And she thought I was crazy.
Anyway, as I've discuss in a lot of my shows because it was a very interesting learning
experience from me.
My third baby, Beckett unfortunately had some breathing issues.
He was in the NICU and he did have some formula in the first few days of life, which he was
given through a feeding tube.
After a few days I was able to nurse him, he successfully latched on.
I did however continue to pump and interestingly enough, I had more milk with Beckett than
I had had for any of my other babies because I was almost over lactating because I was
pumping so much that I had no clue when I went home from the hospital, etc. etc.
And I found that those first few days that he was given formula because he needed it
because he was at risk for jaundice and he also needed to get some nutrition in there
because he was a teeny tiny baby, it didn't harm his breastfeeding at all and he did nurse
very successful for 18 months.
Okay?
Just to go into this recent study that this friend of mine Alice reported on.
She's this fabulous journalist, she's writing on a lot of parenting issues for Babble and
other magazines, and she...
And I'm gonna link to it to the site.
So link through to her but she talks about a recent study that kinda women who did what
is called, EFL, ELF, Early Limited Formula.
In some cases, actually benefited from it and tended to nurse longer.
And what happened is, these women had babies and they were given a tiny tiny bit of formula
after they nursed the babies through a syringe.
And people interviewed about this study said, that it actually helped some of these women
in terms of comforting them and their concerns that their babies weren't getting enough milk.
So they felt like they were nursing, it was going well, their babies were getting enough
milk, and they continued to nurse.
And someone's interview points out that a lot of women stop exactly because they fear
that they're not producing enough milk for their babies.
So anyway I thought this was a really really interesting study, and I just wanna talk a
little bit about my own experience and say to other moms who wanna nurse, that if it
becomes the case that your baby needs to have a little bit of formula in the hospital, don't
assume that your whole breastfeeding is gonna be like sabotaged.
Go over it with your doctor, see if you can nurse from the breast first, then have the
formula be given afterwards either through a cup, through a syringe, through some other
way he might recommend.
Pumping regularly to make sure your milk supply is getting stimulated, which is very important
in those first few days.
Even if you're having something like you're having difficulty latching on, if formula
is recommended do not assume you're not gonna be able to nurse.
Just stick with it and do what lactation consultant tell you to do, make sure that you are continually
stimulating those breasts to produce milk, and I'm crossing my fingers for you that it
will work out.
But I will not assume that giving formula in those first days in the hospital is going
to mean that you're not going to be able to successfully breastfeed.
So anyway, other moms, please share your experiences, I would love to hear them, thank you so much
for watching this blog.
Best of luck breastfeeding your baby, and hope to see you back again soon on CloudMom.com.