Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog | Things That Fail Breastfeeding

Recently I have been approached by friends and relatives on many questions related to breastfeeding. I then realized that I’ve ignored this topic completely in my blog – which I originally intended to do! So, I’m going to revive this mission. Hope these breastfeeding posts can help moms to be.

I have met so many mothers who failed to breastfeed their children, and the core reasons are mostly similar. Now, whenever I heard of new moms who failed in breastfeeding, without having to meet them I can nearly guess their reasons correctly. The reasons can’t run away from the followings.

Delay In First Feed
Many moms were told that they don’t have much milk during the first few days, which happened to be true. Instead of breastfeeding frequently to stimulate milk production, they took the wrong step by supplementing with infant formula. As a result of it, the mothers’ breasts would not produce milk. The effect is like chicken and egg. Without stimulation, no milk. No milk, supplement.

Supplements
Many fear of insufficient milk, without knowing the correct way to judge whether babies have enough or not. With that fear, mothers resolve to supplement with cow’s milk.

Another form of supplement is water. Many fear that baby can get ‘heaty’ (commom Chinese believe), and feed babies with water before and after breastfeeding. When a baby’s stomach is full with water, he drinks less breastmilk, hence less stimulation for production.

I will discuss more about the fear of insufficient milk, and supplementing of water, in later posts.

Night Feeding
It is very common for new mothers to be separated from their babies at night, especially in traditional Chinese practice. The new moms would try to express their breastmilk before bed, and give to midwives (or other care takers) to give babies at night.

Milk’s production is highest from 2am to 5am. If moms do not feed during this period, it is very likely for the body to reduce the production, even moms feed during the day.

Bottle Feeding
Another common trait is to express the milk and give others to bottle feed the baby. I will discuss why people do this in separate post later. The key point here is, baby’s mouth is the most efficient breastpump in the world. All breastpumps try to immidate baby’s suckling motion, but none is 100% similar to that. Though this may not be the most common reason for failure (some exclusively breastfed their kids with this method), it can cause failure if mom is using a cheap/inefficient breastpump, and/or not knowing how to operate the breastpump effectively.

Position
In the past, wrong positioning was the number 1 reason for failure (at least from what I’ve heard). However, as more and more awareness in breastfeeding, I find that a lot of new moms know the correct positioning already. Anyhow, it is still worth mentioning this. Many moms complaint that sore nipples and discomfort made them struggle to continue breastfeeding.

The sore nipples can be as bad as towards bleeding level. No joke! Well, many do not know that sore nipples is actually caused by incorrect positioning during feeding.

Others
Of course, there are other reasons to failure, but they are less common. For example, inverted nipples can be difficult for moms to breastfeed (still possible, need some more hard work). Let me know if I’ve missed out any key ones above.

With this in mind, I will write about tips for successful breastfeeding in a while.

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