The Food of Love E-Book

Kate Evans

• Herausgeber: Myriad Editions
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Fresh and funny, this perfect gift for new mothers is a refreshingly different guide to breastfeeding. Packed with hilarious and stylish graphi, it will entertain the rest of us too: partners, friends and anyone who has ever wondered how it all works. A perennial favourite with breastfeeding counsellors and those working with new mothers, The Food of Love has the support of the professionals as well as of Kate's many fans.

Leseprobe

Well done. You have just undergone the most physically and emotionally exhausting process of your life. You have successfully subdivided. You have a baby. You can take it home with you. Unlike a library book, which you have to return after three weeks, this child is yours for years and years. But what do you do with it? What next?

1

In our society, you are unlikely to have lived with any other breastfeeding mothers. You don’t see breastfeeding on the telly. Many people are too shy to breastfeed in public. Chances are, your mother didn’t breastfeed. Over a third of new mothers who try breastfeeding don’t really get the hang of it, and give up in the first six weeks.1

HELP!

We used to be really good at breastfeeding! Women have been suckling their young for two million years. Look how successful we’ve been at propagating the human race (6 billion and counting…). If we hadn’t been breastfeeding for all that time, there wouldn’t have been anyone around to invent formula milk.

Breastfeeding feels very nice! It’s a beautiful, intimately connected way to communicate with your baby.

Now this book doesn’t have all the answers. This is your baby, who isn’t the same as the one in the books. You will arrive naturally at your own style of parenting, and feel free to take any advice about babycare, including all of this, with a pinch of salt.

Still, you will find all the information here you might need to help you breastfeed successfully. And, if you’re feeling too brain-dead for reading, there are loads of pictures to look at instead. Great!

2

The Food of Love

Kate Evans

3

First published in 2009 This ebook edition published in 2014 by Myriad Editions 59 Lansdowne Place Brighton BN3 1FL, UK www.myriadeditions.com Copyright © Kate Evans 2014 The moral right of the author has been asserted. Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material; should there be any omissions we apologize and shall be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition. The New Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford (Vermilion). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. What to Expect When You’re Breastfeeding…and What if You Can’t? by Clare Byam-Cook (Vermilion). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. The Physical Life of Man and Woman by Pye Henry Chavasse MD (National Publishing Company, Ohio, 1872) Chambers’ Encyclopaedia vol 10 (Chambers, 1880) Mr Chambers’ Cyclopædia by Ephraim Chambers ed. George Lewis Scott (Chambers, 1753) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN (pbk): 978-0-954930-95-0 ISBN (ebk): 978-1-908434-83-8 Designed by Kate Evans Follow The Food of Love on Facebook This ebook edition has been created using CircularFLO from Circular Software

4

Contents

Foreword: A community midwife writes… What are breasts?.......................................................................................................................7 What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?.......................................................................11 How to feed your baby............................................................................................................31 First feeds..................................................................................................................................44 New mother care.....................................................................................................................67 Have I got enough milk?........................................................................................................69 Enough for two? Or three?.....................................................................................................72 Oops, I appear to have too much milk!................................................................................76 How often should you feed yourself?..................................................................................78 How often should you feed your baby?...............................................................................82 Night feedzzz...........................................................................................................................99 Stress and depression...........................................................................................................114 Ouch! Common breastfeeding complaints.......................................................................131 Bad habits...............................................................................................................................143 Out and about.......................................................................................................................146 The Mama Sutra – advanced breastfeeding positions...................................................148 It’s a sling thing!.....................................................................................................................157 Out and about without your baby.......................................................................................161 ‘You’ll ruin your figure!’......................................................................................................164 ‘Doesn’t your husband mind?’............................................................................................169 Sex and breastfeeding...........................................................................................................171 Danger!..................................................................................................................................175 When it’s time to wean..........................................................................................................177 Hey, stop that!.........................................................................................................................189Full-term breastfeeding for the fainthearted.....................................................................192 Sources and resources.............................................................................................................. 196 Index......................................................................................................................................201 Ignore this book........................................................................................................................207

5

Foreword:

A community midwife writes...

As a community midwife a large and rewarding part of my job involves helping and advising new parents throughout the early days of breastfeeding. When I leave them, I often feel worried that I am abandoning them to another sleepless and anxious night with little support and a punishing regime to fulfil. Of course my aim is to make things easier and facilitate blissful breastfeeding for many months. However, that first couple of weeks can be tricky. I often wish I could leave a breastfeeding support worker to help them through those initial few days of latching problems or jaundice or non-stop suckling. Hooray! Kate’s book is the closest companion to a 24-hour breastfeeding support worker that I can imagine. What’s more, it will make you laugh, which is essential when new parenthood is overwhelming you. I only wish the NHS could afford to hand out copies so that when I turn up at people’s houses to find shell-shocked, brand-new parents with huge black-ringed eyes and hair that looks like it’s just been through a wind tunnel saying ‘believe me, this is the first time that baby has slept since you left yesterday!’ I could give them a copy of The Food of Love to advise, reassure and entertain them. Breastfeeding does just happen for the lucky few, but the majority of new mums, even those who have successfully breastfed before, will need a little support to get started. It is important not to feel isolated and anxious. I believe a huge source of anxiety is the belief that everyone else is blissfully breastfeeding like professionals and you are the only mummy and baby that seem to be struggling. I can say that all the situations which Kate describes are common and occur frequently amongst my clients. In a world which is becoming increasingly better-informed about health, nutrition and well-being, from birth to school dinners, breastfeeding is indisputably the best possible start in life that you can give your baby. This book can help more mums to establish and enjoy the bliss of happily breastfeeding their babies for as long as they wish to. It is an essential read for the 21st-century mum. —Ali Dale, RM

6

What are breasts?

I don’t know about you, but the first thing I felt about my breasts was anxiety, because they weren’t there yet, followed rapidly by embarrassment, because they were. Acquiring breasts is the obvious sign of becoming a woman – far too obvious for many eleven-year-old girls. Breasts in our culture are seen not as maternal but as sexual. Breasts are sexy. Open any newspaper, look on any advertising hoarding and you’ll see breasts performing their primary function: looking nice for men to get excited about. It follows, therefore, that as sex organs, breasts should be kept private, and certainly not put in babies’ mouths. That’s kind of...unnatural!

7

The Food of Love

Most of the rest of the world think we’re mad.

A survey of 191 societies in 1951 found that only 13 of them rated women’s breasts as erogenous zones1. That’s not to say that breasts aren’t sexy. Many women get a great deal of pleasure from their breasts during sexual intercourse. But necks, ear lobes, inner thighs, wrists, fingers and toes are all sexy too, and there’s no taboo against showing them in public. Non-Western societies don’t think they should be private when there’s a hungry baby to feed. Even in strict Islamic cultures, where women cover virtually their entire bodies from public view, women breastfeed discreetly anywhere they want to. By definition, every other thriving human civilization has encouraged breastfeeding. It’s the way that babies survive. Women there don’t have to learn how to breastfeed – they see it all around them.

8

What are breasts?

Still, here we are in the West. Our tribal support networks have vanished. We are split up into flats and houses, embarking alone on the experience of mothering, something that society views as a temporary career break. And breasts, here, are sexy. Breastfeeding seems weird. Bottlefeeding seems easier. Babies miss out.

You are much less likely to breastfeed if all your friends’ babies are bottle-fed.

This is a shame. Breastfeeding is lovely. Babies love it. Mothers love it. Your body is capable of producing this amazing, perfect food that will transform your tiny baby into the happiest, cleverest, healthiest kid they can be. And it’s free! Breastmilk is so special; it would cost hundreds of pounds if you could buy it in a tin. It’s got to be worth a go.

9

The Food of Love

Breasts make milk. That’s what they do.

Internally, the breast looks like a tree, or a bush. You will have an average of nine milk glands or lobes in each breast – some women have more, some have fewer. Each has a duct that leads back from the nipple and divides off into what looks like branches and twigs. The ‘leaves’ are the alveoli, little round pockets which are lined with lactocytes, the milk-producing cells. Around the outside of your milk gland ‘tree’ there are ‘clouds’ of fat, and there are some streaks of fat between the branches too. This means that you can’t tell how big your milk glands are by looking at your breast. The size of your breast does not determine how much milk you make. That depends on how often and how much your baby drinks. The hormone prolactin in your bloodstream triggers the lactocytes to start producing milk. As they fill up, the alveoli stretch and change the shape of the lactocytes so they can’t absorb any more prolactin. So as your breasts become ‘full’, milk production slows down. There is also a protein in breastmilk with the snappy name of ‘Feedback Inhibitor of Breastmilk’. When the alveoli fill with milk, more and more of this protein collects there, and this also gives the lactocytes the message to stop producing milk. Once the baby starts suckling, a rush of the hormone oxytocin makes muscles around the alveoli contract, forcing the milk down into the ducts. They swell behind the nipple, until they look like the trunk of a tree. The wave-like motion of the baby’s tongue against those fat milk ducts brings big gulps of breastmilk into his mouth. The baby must get a good mouthful of breast to be able to reach the milk ducts and feed efficiently. As the alveoli empty out, prolactin floods back into the lactocytes, so milk production starts up again. Now the baby starts to feed more slowly, and the milk that is produced becomes higher in fat and more satisfying. Once the baby has had enough of this high-fat milk, he ends the feed. Your breasts are not like a bottle. They do not fill up with milk, then empty as a baby feeds. Your breasts are like a factory. The more your baby feeds, the more milk they make. When you let your baby feed frequently, your breasts become better at making milk. When you let him feed until he’s full, you help him get the most from every feed.

fat

alveoli

ducts behind the nipple swell up when the milk flows

10

What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?

11

The Food of Love

Ten minutes later:

12

What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?

Breastfeeding is easy!

13

The Food of Love

Breastfeeding is a great excuse for being lazy.*

* Don’t tell my husband.

14

What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?

Breastfeeding is lovely.

Prolactin, a hormone which is released during breastfeeding, fills you with loving feelings.

15

The Food of Love

16

What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?

Breastfeeding is convenient.

17

The Food of Love

Breastfeeding gives you a fantastic cleavage.

18

What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?

Breastfeeding helps you lose weight...

Or, depending on how you look at things, breastfeeding is a brilliant excuse to carry on eating double dinners!

...it helps you to get back in shape...

The hormone oxytocin, which is released when a baby suckles, also helps your womb shrink back down to size.

...and it protects your child against obesity.

Breastfed babies know how much to eat. The rich, creamy hind-milk that comes at the end of a feed contains a substance which makes them feel naturally full. Breastfed babies are 35% less likely to become overweight six-year-olds than babies fed on formula.1

19

The Food of Love

Breastfed babies are cleverer.

Human beings have very large brains, and human milk is the best substance for growing them. So, breastfed babies have higher IQs than formula-fed babies. And, the longer babies are breastfed, the smarter they get2

.

20

What’s so special about breastmilk anyway?

Breastmilk contains the natural sleep promoter ‘delta- sleep-inducing-peptide’3. Formula milk doesn’t.

Breastfeeding helps your baby sleep.

Breastfeeding hormones prolactin and oxytocin are nature’s relaxing tranquillisers.

Breastfeeding helps you sleep.

21