Breastfeeding Support

I was thinking about this today as we were visiting my new newphew in the hospital. My brother in laws gf has had some difficulties getting him to be interested in nursing. I haven't been terribly impressed with the nurses. They are caring and everything, but they dont seem to be pushing and too supportive and really making sure the breast is introduced. They just keep asking her how things were going, but haven't taken the time to really show her how, and instead offering formula and syringes and feeding tubes with the syringe. One of the nurses finally came in tonight who was a lactation consultatant. She gave several tips and techniques and really tried to work with her. She explained that the syringe is going backwards because the baby closes his mouth over it tightly as opposed to openning wide to take the breast. With the help of a friend and mil we were able to get him to start sucking for a bit and he had a good latch. We were all really happy because it is definately what is best for both of them.

I do hope that she has support and the nurses are encouraging. It can be very frustrating.

We dont have much support for breastfeeding here in North America. In this area we have more than many places for support. I was talking to her about nursing Zoe and sometimes I dont feel a lot of support to keep nursing her at 15mo and even discouraging nursing her at 15mo. What I have learend is
- at 18 mo there is a new spike of antibodies that come into the milk
- the MINIMUM age to stop breastfeeding recommended by Health Canada is 2years!
- the average age the world stops breastfeeding is almost 5 years old!

I am happy to be a breastfeeding mother, and I wish more support was available for older babies and more encouragement on the important of feeding from the breast. Breastmilk is even good from a bottle, but they have shown that babies have better lung capacity and developement from feeding directly from the breast.

Go forth women and lactate! :)