Written by: Jess Kimball
The Benefits of Breastfeeding
August 1st through 7th marks World Breastfeeding Week. Making the decision to breastfeed your baby can be one of the most empowering, but intimidating decisions.
There are many benefits to breastfeeding or even bottle feeding your pumped breastmilk or a donor’s milk. Breastmilk is packed with antibodies that help form your baby’s immune system. When you are exposed to a sickness your breastmilk changes to protect your baby from whatever it was you were exposed to.
Breastmilk contains a varied array of nutrients that are unique to each family. It also contains beneficial bacteria and prebiotics for the beneficial bacteria. Breastmilk nurtures the microbiome and helps play a role in lowering the risk for chronic diseases like asthma, obesity, allergies, dermatitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and neurodevelopmental disorders. They also regulate anxiety, mood, cognition in the brain/gut axis, and pain in the brain/gut axis.
Breastfeeding your baby is a great opportunity to do skin-to-skin. It can be a great opportunity to bond with your baby. When you breastfeed, oxytocin flows through you. This improves your mood, promotes bonding, and helps the uterus contract postpartum for optimal healing. Breastmilk truly is the perfect food for babies and has many benefits for the mother as well!
Despite all of the wonderful benefits and reasons why you might want to breastfeed, it can still feel extremely intimidating. Education and support are key to being successful in your breastfeeding journey.
Support could come from a lactation professional or even your partner. There are many lactation providers you could encounter. You might see a CLC, IBCLC, CBE, or even just your postpartum doula. The first step to reducing the intimidation of breastfeeding is accessing education and information about lactation. We will introduce you to the basics but recommend contacting a lactation professional prenatally or postpartum to get all the support you need.
Understanding The Breastfeeding Basics
Milk production timeline:
Milk doesn’t come in immediately after delivery. It can take three to five days postpartum for this to happen. During those first few days, you produce colostrum, which provides protective antibodies and helps the baby’s digestive system develop.
Milk production:
92% of people produce enough breastmilk for their baby, but 92% of people also report having issues with breastfeeding, so how do you know if you actually are producing enough milk? By knowing what is normal and trusting your providers. It may feel like you are not producing enough, but that may be because social media shows people producing an abnormal amount and donating it. That is actually one of the dangers of overpumping. Each time you empty your breast you are telling your body to produce more milk. Introducing a pump session can increase milk supply, but introducing too many can have you producing the milk quantity for two babies. When this happens it can be hard to get back to the necessary amount for just your baby and you may be left feeling engorged. When this happens many people save a large supply or choose to donate, which we see a lot on social media or in the news. To actually know if your baby is getting enough milk you should monitor diapers and go to the pediatrician for weight checks. They will notify you if there is reason to be concerned and you can seek help from an IBCLC before making a big switch to something like formula.
Supplementation:
If you do need to supplement the best option is your pumped breastmilk. If that is not an option the next best is safe donor milk from a milk bank. Next is a soy-free formula. A soy-based formula should be the very last resort.
Changes in Milk:
You may notice changes in the fattiness or color of your milk throughout a 24-hour period or over the course of a few weeks. Milk changes colors when it transitions from colostrum to milk and even when the antibodies in milk change due to exposure to different germs. Your milk might turn pink, yellow, orange, green, white, or light blue! Many people notice greater volume and faster flow in their breast milk in the early hours of the day, which may be due to higher levels of prolactin, a hormone that helps produce milk, at that time. At nighttime, your milk contains melatonin to help your baby sleep. The hormones in your milk are changing all throughout the day! You may notice your milk seems thicker and creamier towards the end of a feed. As the feed progresses, the fat composition gradually increases due to the mechanics of milk moving through the breast. This is usually referred to as hindmilk. Foremilk is the more ‘watery’ milk that comes at the start of the feed. Both are extremely important and beneficial to your baby.
Choosing to provide your baby with human milk is a wonderful investment in their health, but it comes with its challenges. In honor of World Breastfeeding Week’s 2023 theme “Enabling Breastfeeding”, we will discuss the challenge of lactation in the workplace and provide informational support through our articles this week.
At Global Foundation for Girls (GFG), we are active thought partners, serving global communities of birthing persons in order to advance and support the advocacy movement. We lead webinars and trainings for providers including doulas, social workers, childbirth educators, and more! To learn more about our upcoming trainings click here!
Jess Kimball, AS, CLC, Certified Birth and Postpartum Doula, PMH-C, Certified Infant Sleep Coach