Breastfeeding - Dealing With Bad Advice

When you have a baby, everyone has a bit of advice for you. This applies to all aspects of child care, including breastfeeding. It is a daunting task to sort through all this unsolicited advice, most of which is unfortunately unsound. Here, I have made a list of common types of bad advice on breastfeeding. This list is necessarily incomplete. Your best strategy is to gather as much information as you can beforehand. It is also a very good idea to go to a La Leche League meeting. If you have a friend, relative, or neighbor who has exclusively breastfed a baby for at least four months and continued breastfeeding for more than a year, you have a good source of advice. If you need more specific advice on any problems you might encounter, call a lactation consultant. Many people are hesitant to do this, but it can do wonders.

• After you finish nursing: "Your baby is still hungry. Give her (or him) a bottle."
  • You should avoid supplementary bottles. They will cause your milk supply to decrease.
  • If your baby is really still hungry, she or he is probably going through a growth spurt. Nurse as often as your baby wants, and your milk supply will catch up with your baby's increased appetite in a day or two.
  • Perhaps your baby isn't hungry, she or he just wants to nurse for comfort. Nursing for comfort is just as important as nursing for food. Furthermore, by giving a bottle, you might cause your baby to become overweight.
  • If you are really worried that your baby isn't getting enough milk, see the page on your milk supply.
• "Your baby is nursing too often. Give her or him a bottle of formula or sugar water or juice every now and then."
  • Supplementary bottles not only decrease your milk, they can also be harmful to your baby. They increase the risk of infection (especially diarrhea) and food allergies. Avoid them.
• "If you give your baby a bottle of formula, you'll be able to sleep longer."
  • Bottle-fed babies often go for about four hours between feeds. Breastfed babies tend to go about two to three hours (plus comfort nursing, which may be much more often, but usually shorter).
  • This leads many people to consider bottle-feeding so they can sleep longer at night.
  • Before you make this decision, consider the following:
  • The reason bottle-fed babies go longer between feeds is because formula is hard to digest. Your baby is in constant gastric distress. Do you really want to do this to your baby? Constipation is also common in bottle-fed babies, but almost unheard of in exclusively breastfed babies.
  • If you sleep with your baby (or at least keep your baby's cradle or crib next to your bed), you won't need to wake up fully to breastfeed. You'll end up sleeping much better.
  • If you bottle-feed, you'll need to warm a bottle for the baby. By the time you do that, your baby will quite possibly be screaming. You might want to get out of bed and pace the hallway for a while before your baby is calm enough to eat. A baby who is worked-up like this is likely to swallow a lot of air, which means you'll need to spend some time burping your baby (bottle-fed babies generally need more burping breastfed ones to begin with). You might wake up fewer time than a breastfeeding mother, but your (and everyone else's) sleep will be disrupted much more seriously.
  • The hormone prolactin that your body produces while you nurse has a relaxing effect. As a result, breastfeeding helps you sleep better. Bottle-feeding does not do that for you.
• "You shouldn't nurse your baby every time she or he wants to. Teach your baby who is boss."
  • Little babies cry when they need something. They are too young to be able to manipulate people. If your baby wants to nurse, that's because she or he needs to.
  • If you don't nurse on demand, you'll risk losing your milk supply.
  • Babies who nurse on demand spend about half as much time crying as babies who are nursed on a schedule.
• "You shouldn't nurse your baby so often. She or he will grow too dependent on the breast."
  • Babies whose needs are satisfied promptly and consistently grow into independent, satisfied adults.
  • Babies whose needs are ignored or met inconsistently become spoiled, needy children.
• "Don't bother with nursing. Formula is easier and just as good. I was never nursed and I turned out fine (or I never nursed my babies and they turned out fine)."
  • The benefits of breastfeeding are many.
  • You might have turned out OK at the end, but you probably had eight times as many ear infections, three times as many colds, fifty times as many bouts of diarrhea and constipation as a result of bottle-feeding.
  • Many babies don't turn out OK when they bottle-feed. They might end up having food allergies, asthma, diabetes, cancer, or other serious diseases.
  • You might still come to harm because you weren't breastfed. Did you know that you are more likely to have cancer? That your body is more likely to reject a kidney transplant should you need one? That the mother is more likely to have cancer or osteoporosis?
  • Who knows what psychological problems you might be experiencing because you were never nursed?
  • Here is a brand new baby. We don't know if bottle-feeding is going to cause her or him serious harm or not. It very well may.
  • We know for sure that bottle-feeding will cause her or him unnecessary misery, even if it's only passing.
  • We know that breastfeeding is going to help her or him be healthier and happier.
  • I am not willing to bottle-feed my baby because she or he might just do OK. I want the best for my baby, and breast is best!
  • If your parents smoked but you turned out OK, should you blow smoke into your baby's face? Of course not!
  • Chances are your parents drove you around without a car seat, and yet you didn't die in a car crash. Should you therefore drive your baby around without one? Of course not!
  • If your parents bottle-fed you and you turned out OK, here is what that means: they took their chances, and they (and you) were lucky. You don't know if your baby will be as lucky. Don't take chances. Do what you know is best. Breastfeed!
• "You are letting your baby nurse too long. You'll get sore nipples."
  • Sore nipples are caused by improper latch-on, not nursing too long.
  • You should let your baby nurse as long as she or he wants to. Otherwise, she or he might be deprived of nutrients.
  • The first milk a baby gets from the breast is called foremilk. This is low in fat and calories, and serves mainly to quench thirst.
  • This is followed by hindmilk, which is much richer.
  • If you limit your baby's time at the breast, she or he will be getting too much foremilk and no or little hindmilk. This can lead to undernourishment, gassiness and fussiness (because of the higher lactose content of foremilk), and to decreased milk supply. Trust your baby (see the page on milk production).
  • If your baby is nursing for an excessively long time (45 minutes or more on one side), call a lactation consultant to make sure you are latching on correctly and that there isn't another problem.
• See also:
  • Dealing with criticism.
  • Personal reasons for not breastfeeding.
  • Miscellaneous reasons for not breastfeeding.

Back to the breastfeeding main page

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