How To Latch

Below is a checklist I created to help mothers with common breastfeeding challenges.  These guidelines will be helpful for most mothers and babies. However, there can be exceptions to some of these rules, and you might need to experiment with solutions that differ from what you see here.  For example, when holding a baby in a horizontal position across the mother's chest, most babies latch better if you slide their body a bit toward the mother's center; however, a small percentage will do better if you slide them away from the center and toward the mother's side.  If breastfeeding continues to be painful, seek a lactation counselor or consultant who can assess for issues such as tongue tie or neonatal abstinence syndrome which can cause baby's jaws to clench. This checklist may be reprinted for individual use by families or healthcare providers with credit given to the author, but may not be mass-reproduced without permission.

Skin-to-Skin Contact: It's Not Just For Birth

More people are hearing about the benefits of skin-to-skin contact between babies and parents.  As a Certified Lactation Counselor, one of my favorite pieces of advice for new parents is to use skin-to-skin (STS) well beyond the moment of birth.  For babies, breastfeeding is a "full-body experience," and they need the sensory input of STS to let them know where they are in space, and to send a signal to their brains to begin latching correctly.  Babies also need to be able to use their hands to knead the breast, and STS helps raise levels of a mother's milk-making hormones.  If breastfeeding is not perfected after the first few days of life, by all means continue to use STS to help speed up the process!  Hope Parish and Daniela Jensen will be offering a FREE Webinar about STS, hosted by Isis Parenting, on Wednesday May 15, 2013 at 8:00 PM Eastern Time.  To register, visit https://cc.readytalk.com/r/yn3euqhwql6z.  Hope and Daniela are the creators of the NüRoo Pocket, a garment that holds baby STS for what is also known as "Kangaroo Care."  See below for more information about the Webinar, as well as the "Top 10 Myths of Kangaroo Care and STS" by Hope Parish and Daniela Jensen.