Masochistic Mommy

We’ve all heard the mantra “one bottle won’t hurt”. It’s the mating call of the disengaged health professional or well-meaning but ultimately misinformed relative. A study published last year even suggested that giving formula to babies can help relax mothers and increase the length of time they end up breastfeeding ( The Telegraph 2013 ). This was a huge pat on the back for supplementing mommas - and there are plenty of them about. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , one-quarter of the babies born in America in 2009 were supplemented with infant formula by two days of age, and by three months, this had increased to nearly two-thirds. With this bottle-centric backdrop it should come as no surprise that when I posted the following meme on Facebook, there was a lot of panties taking residence in buttcracksville: However, as I have explained previously ( here ), one bottle does in fact hurt. It can cause irrevocable damage to your baby’s immature digestive

Earlier this month, Mark Zuckerberg hoist his white boxers onto a pole and waved them in defeat. He, and his fratboy team at Facebook HQ, finally conceded that breastfeeding wasn’t sexual . Good. Glad we sorted that out lads. Technology had, at last, given breastfeeding moms a high five. This was great timing, as I was about to launch a new breastfeeding cellphone app: an interactive version of The Timeline of a Breastfed Baby ! A dynamic on-the-go breastfeeding resource for busy moms who needed accessible support at their fingertips. The dudes at Google swiftly approved the app for their Android market. Thanks guys. Next stop – Apple. Now, Apple are notorious for being elitist pearl-clutching brand-guardians. Any company can create and submit an app to appear in their app store, but Apple has the ultimate say on which apps make it. The basics of the their vetting process boil down to a technical pre-application check of your binary, a review by an Apple employee along with revisions t

‘Motherhood changes you forever’ - the cliché your own mother forewarned you. And she was right. Motherhood, and specifically breastfeeding - the most central physiological act of mothering during infancy, changes you because it literally alters your brain - structurally, functionally, and in many ways, irreversibly. I am about to explain how the act of nursing sets apart mothers who breastfeed from those who don’t – on a neurological scale. Breastfeeding mothers and their babies are attuned to each other on a deep biological level. In fact, a breastfeeding mother and her baby are sometimes referred to as a ‘dyad’ – two individuals so closely linked they are considered one unit. Her body nourishes him; his feeding determines her milk production. Scientists call this ‘limbic regulation’. It’s a remarkable natural phenomenon whereby the mother is neurologically and chemically in sync with her baby, and her baby to her. Michael Merzenich, the San Francisco University brain plasticity expe

Stories of breastfeeding failure are demoralizing on a viral scale. One of the most common excuses mothers give for quitting breastfeeding is the assertion that their breasts malfunctioned. This gives other women a shaky perception of what their bodies are actually capable of. In this post I explain how and why the myth of widespread malfunctioning mammaries is utter tosh. Pierced nipples:  These chicks don’t usually cause a problem with breastfeeding. Occasionally, nipple piercings cause some of the milk ducts to seal over, so milk can’t get out from those sections of the breast. If this happens, milk production will stop in those areas and the rest of the breast will produce more ( La Leche League 1999 ). You should remove any rings or bars before you feed, though, so they don’t hurt your baby’s mouth, or you may prefer to let the holes close and have your nipples re-pierced later. Implants:  Implants are inserted behind the milk-making tissue, so they don’t interfere with milk prod