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BREASTFEEDING can be challenging, especially when you are breastfeeding for the first time. However, many of the common problems mothers encounter are temporary and can be overcome. Here are a few common ones you may face while nursing, and some of the ways to deal with them.

Engorged breasts

Problem: When you produce more milk than your baby consumes (or she expresses), the milk may accumulate in breast tissues, causing swelling and tenderness or pain in your breasts. However, when the breast is engorged, babies may find it difficult to latch on properly.

Signs/Symptoms: Your breasts become firm, flushed, warm to the touch, and feel as if they are throbbing. You might also develop a slight fever.

Treatment: A cold compress or ice pack can help relieve the discomfort. After that, you can express your milk by hand or with the help of a breast pump to soften the breast and help the baby latch on more easily.

Sore nipples

Problem: In most cases, nipple injury (bruises, cracks or blisters) can happen due to problems with the way you hold your baby during breastfeeding and the way he latches on to your breasts.

Signs/Symptoms: Although it is normal for your nipples to become more sensitive during pregnancy and a week after delivery, nipple soreness that happens after that period, or lasts throughout a nursing session (normal nipple soreness usually lasts for the first 30 to 60 seconds) might be due to nipple injury.

Treatment: While nipple ointments may help, sore nipples that result from wrong breastfeeding techniques can be resolved when you learn how to breastfeed correctly.

My baby bites!

Problem: When babies begin teething at about six to 10 months of age, some of them may begin to use them on your breasts.

Signs/Symptoms: The baby bites during breastfeeding.

Treatment: As it is not possible to bite and nurse at the same time, you can teach your infant not to bite by immediately removing him from the breast as soon as he begins to bite. Otherwise, you can also try to bring him more deeply onto your breast when he starts to bite or give him teething toys, teething rings or cloths to suck on before nursing.

Read more @ http://thestar.com.my/health/story.asp?file=/2010/8/1/health/6702613&sec=health

Breastfeeding may be a natural act, but it is also a skill that needs to be learned.

IT is a question that perplexes many mothers (when it comes to breastfeeding). “If it is natural, why can’t I seem to get it right?”

It may be that all these years, women have been told, even as young girls, that nursing is a natural, maternal instinct all mothers have. And it may be that all along we have assumed that once our baby arrives, we will naturally know what to do.

But these assumptions – as experts agree and studies show – are not exactly accurate. Even the WHO, in its web page on exclusive breastfeeding, spells it out: “While breastfeeding is a natural act, it is also a learned behaviour. An extensive body of research has demonstrated that mothers and other caregivers require active support for establishing and sustaining appropriate breastfeeding practices.”

For Erra Fazira, of all the benefits of breastfeeding, it is the mother-daughter bond she appreciates the most.

The instinct to care and provide for the baby is natural, but when it comes to nursing, many mothers need to learn how.

Actress Erra Fazira believes that nursing is a natural process for a mother, but she also believes in being prepared. When she was pregnant with her first daughter Aleesya, who celebrated her first birthday four months ago, she knew that breastfeeding is a process she didn’t want to miss.

Nursing starters

With the increasing amount of books, websites, and support groups dedicated to help women learn how to breastfeed, one does wonder, just how did our ancestors do it?

Paediatrician Dr Koe Swee Lee explains, “Young girls (those days) grew up seeing their mothers, aunties, and neighbours breastfeed, but nowadays, a lot of young women grow up without seeing their mothers breastfeed.”

Dr Koe Swee Lee tries to make it as simple and natural as possible when she teaches new mothers how to breastfeed. In this picture, she demonstrates the correct way to hold a baby while breastfeeding.

Today, the difference is if women don’t learn from their mothers the skills to nurse, they can now learn them from their own reading, lactation consultants, or even some nurses.

Dr Koe tries to make it as simple and natural as possible when she teaches new mothers how to breastfeed. “If a mother wants to breastfeed, she needs to remember only three things: feed early, feed frequently, and feed properly,” she says.

Practise, practise, practise

While babies suck naturally, they need to be taught how to suck correctly. This involves learning how to sit properly and hold the baby properly.

“If the baby sucks only on the nipple, the mother will get sore nipples,” says Dr Koe. So if the baby does not suck correctly, the mother needs to pull him away and let him latch on again.

How long do you let the baby suckle? It is up to the baby. “Let the baby suckle until he is asleep. It may take 20 to 30 minutes, and once the baby has finished, don’t pull him off the nipple, wait for the baby to let go,” Dr Koe explains.

This handout released in August 1, 2002, shows New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless, the persona behind the popular international television series Xena: Warrior Princess, breastfeeding her three-month-old son, Judah, to promote World Breastfeeding Week (August 1-7) on a poster in Auckland. – AFP

Mothers can gauge whether their child is getting enough milk by observing their sleeping habits and bowel movements. If a child is able to sleep for at least an hour, is passing urine five to six times a day and starts to produce stools that are yellow instead of the initial, dark green and almost-black hue, then he is getting enough milk.

by Lim Wey Wen.

Read more @ http://thestar.com.my/health/story.asp?file=/2010/8/1/health/6702591&sec=health

The need to focus on maternal health and the incidence of deaths among children is unarguable as 10 million children under 5 die every year of malnutrition. — Reuters picture

While the G8 Muskoka Initiative on maternal health and child mortality has been declared a success, on the contrary, it echoes the complete abandonment of past declarations, write LEAH McMILLAN and HANY BESADA.

CANADIAN Prime Minister and 2010 G8 president Stephen Harper summarised the ‘Muskoka Initiative: Maternal, Newborn and Under-Five Child Health’ by exclaiming: “We have been successful.”

While the media has focused on this “success”, with the main debate criticising the exclusion of abortion from the maternal health dialogue following Harper’s refusal to fund safer abortions in developing countries, a critical issue has yet to be questioned: why are we praising a declaration that is nothing more than a regurgitation of the very same commitments made 20 years ago?

While millions of global citizens, particularly in industrialised countries, have been following the merits and failures of this so-called new initiative, most working in the area of international development are experiencing an odd form of déjà vu — have these promises to maternal health and under-5 child mortality not been promised, and confirmed, and reaffirmed, and yet again declared time and again, since the Millennium Declaration first surfaced in 1990?

Undoubtedly, the need for focusing on maternal health and the incidence of deaths among children is unarguable. The World Bank indicates that women in Africa run a one in 22 chance of dying from pregnancy, in comparison withone in 6,700 chances for women in the high-income countries.

Around 200 million women suffer from birth-related complications each year, 99 per cent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, while another 10 million children under 5 die every year.

by Eah McMillan and Hany Besada.

Read more @ http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/Enoughofsummitsandemptypromises/Article/