Breastfeeding - Breastfeeding In Public

If you are serious about breastfeeding, you will want to breastfeed exclusively, and practice demand feeding. This means you will either have to lock yourself up away from people for a year or two (by which time your child might need to nurse just in the morning and at night), or nurse in public. I'm sure you'll agree that nursing in public is the right way to go. Parents of a young baby already suffer from too little time and energy for contact with other people. They don't need nursing to cause more of this. Besides this, nursing in public is needed to counter the current, unfortunate bottle-feeding culture and creating a proper, desirable breastfeeding culture.

• Before you start breastfeeding in public, make sure you have the support of your mate and preferably other family members and friends.
• Make sure you get the mechanics of breastfeeding right before you try nursing in front of people you don't feel entirely comfortable with (which for most people means everyone). Make sure you and your baby are pros at positioning and latch-on.
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• Breastfeed just before you go out or have your guests come in. This way, your baby might not need to nurse for a while, and you'll have time to adjust to the situation and relax a bit before it's time to nurse again.
• Try to breastfeed your baby before she or he is desperately hungry and screaming. This way, it'll be a lot easier to nurse quietly without bothering anyone.
• Decide whether you want to nurse discreetly or openly, or perhaps even in private, in another room away from everyone. Do whatever makes you and your baby most comfortable and happy.
• See also dealing with criticism and lack of support, especially if you are nursing a toddler or young child
• If you are thinking of using a public-feeding bottle, think twice: if you use bottles regularly, you'll be reducing your milk supply, unless you use the bottle (or better, cup or syringe) to give your baby breastmilk that you have pumped or manually expressed. By giving formula, you are also increasing your child's risk of food allergies later, as well as contributing to the reinforcement of the bottle-feeding culture that we unfortunately live in.

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Comments (1)

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Very nice tips.I think nursing in public is no obscene.Breast milk contains all the nutrients for the proper growth of the baby.Breast feed is more natural, We should avoid bottle feed culture.There are few cons of bottle feed culture, but no drawbacks of breastfeeding.Breastfeeding is best - there are a lot of benefits of breastfeeding

Isis , October 10, 2009 | url

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