Hi guys hope everybody's doing great. A few thoughts today about sucking and the issue
of when you're nursing your baby and how you can know whether your baby's actually
eating or just sucking and basically using your breast like a pacifier. Now one of the
reasons I think that many moms prefer to feed their babies using bottles is that it's
more of a precise thing. It's easy to know how much milk the baby has actually consumed.
With nursing this is actually a bit trickier. There is no precise way to know exactly how
much milk your baby has consumed. And as we all know one of the things that doctors do
or lactation consultants when their worried about a babies weight gain is to weigh the
baby before the mother has nursed the baby and then after the mother has nursed the baby.
But this too can be a very imprecise science because the baby might have decided to go
to the bathroom. So you still don't know exactly how much milk was consumed at that
feeding. So one of the things I've started to realize as I've had all my babies and
spent a lot of time nursing them and try to avoid basically having them just hang on me
and use my like a pacifier is that a good thing that you can really try to do is listen.Listen
to the baby and try to distinguish between the sound of the baby sucking, swallowing
the milk and having the milk pass down through your baby's throat and the sound of the
baby just sucking for comfort. And I also wanted to tell you guys that one of things
that I found out through trying to research this and I really like a well-known expert,
Brazelton, on this topic is that people have analyzed this whole thing about babies and
how they suck and how their mouth actually moves when they suck. So what Brazelton says
is that there are indeed two types of sucking. There are non-nutritive sucking whereby the
baby is using the front of her mouth and she's licking and she's comforting herself, she's
soothing herself. And the other kind of sucking which is nutritive - sucking in order to have
the milk pass down her throat. And with this other kind of sucking the baby is actually
using the back of her tongue and she's using the top of her throat. And she's using that
to power this milk down. Think about it, it's like a pump. This tiny little baby is going
to suck and pump all this milk down into her. So that is the nutritive sucking. And in my
view, this is what you can hear. You can actually hear if this is happening. And this makes
a huge, huge difference for a nursing mom, especially in the early days because you can
avoid hours and hours and hours of having that baby sit on your breast and just suck
in a non-nutritive way. Now one other, tiny little detail I want to add here. From what
I have read, some experts do think that there is a value to this non-nutritive sucking.
Because what the baby is actually doing is getting small, tiny little bits of hind milk
which is a very valuable form of milk, which is very high in calories and fat and is very
important for babies. And we talk about this in other videos how you want to try and reach
the hind milk. So if you are having an issue with weight gain with your baby, make sure
you talk to your doctor about this. I feel like my baby is full, my baby is burped, my
baby is awake, she doesn't seem to want anymore milk should I just let her hang out
a little bit there and get a little more of that hind milk? Is this something that I need
to do? If your doctor says no you're fine, you're feeding enough, your baby is getting
a nice full feed, you don't have to worry about this.
And your in this situation where you're nursing your baby and you feel like your baby
is full and she's doing the non-nutritive sucking for comfort on your boob, here's
what you can do: you take your pinky finger, I always advise, sorry this is not my pinky
finger, a little distracted here, you wet your pinky finger in a glass of cold water,
you insert it between the baby's mouth and your breast to break the suction and you take
your baby off. And you know once you offered your breast again and your baby says "thank
you very much I'm not interested" that at least for now your job in nursing your
baby and providing nutrition is done.