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Breastfeeding is even more important for babies with special needs and their parents. Breastfeeding gives you a higher level of maternal hormones, which increase your intuition and perseverance to meet the needs of your special baby. Because of its physical, psychological, and medical benefits, breastfeeding is even more important for these babies. A baby has special needs. Parents develop a style of caring for their baby and in so doing elevate their level of intuition and sensitivity toward their baby to match the level of baby’s needs. Let’s discuss the most common situations in which babies with needs in unique situations bring out a special kind of parenting.
The Cesarean-Birthed Baby
Following a surgical birth a breastfeeding mother has double job: healing herself and nurturing her baby. Here’s how to do both:
* Ask the lactation consultant in the maternity unit to show you the side-lying position and the clutch hold for breastfeeding. These positions keep baby’s weight off your incision.
* If you would rather sit up to nurse your baby, sit in a straight-backed armchair rather than in your hospital bed. This is easier on your abdominal muscles. Use pillows along your side to bring baby up to breast height and to protect your incision.
* Be sure that dad observes how the professionals help you position yourself and your baby for comfort and for correct breastfeeding technique so that he can take over this role when you go home. Ask hem to instruct dad on holding baby’s lower jaw down and everting baby’s lip outward, since it may be uncomfortable for you to bend over to see how baby is latching on.
* Take whatever pain medications you need to be comfortable. Pain suppresses milk production and interferes with your milk-ejection reflex. The usual medications used for post-op pain are safe, since very little goes into your milk.
* If post-operative complications prevent breastfeeding for a day or two, father or a nurse can give formula, but preferably not by bottle. Cup feeding or finger feeding with a syringe or a supplementor is better than using a bottle, which may lead to nipple confusion.
* Breastfeed your baby frequently, night and day. Studies have shown that it may take longer for a mother’s milk to come in after a cesarean birth. Frequent feeding will build up your milk supply more quickly. If baby is not breastfeeding yet, you need to begin pumping your breasts as soon as possible so that your baby can benefit from your colostrum produced during this time, and so you will have an ample milk supply when baby does start breastfeeding.
* Baby should room-in with you as soon as possible. Because of post-operative sedation this is usually discouraged for cesarean mothers. It is still advised to room-in if someone can stay with you to help care for the baby.
Be patient. It takes more time, support, and perseverance to achieve a successful breastfeeding relationship following an operation. Some of the energy that would otherwise go toward breastfeeding is shared with healing your own body. Breastfeeding harmony will come, though not as easily or quickly.
The Premature Baby
These special babies have special needs for extra nutrition and comfort. Here is where the breastfeeding mother shines. The recent advances of newborn intensive care have increased the chances of taking home a healthy baby, but the same technology that is saving more babies has, by its very definition, displaced the mother. But you are an indispensable part of the medical team.
Supermilk!
A premature baby has an even greater need for mother’s milk. Premature babies need more proteins and calories for catch-up growth. Researchers have discovered that the milk of mothers who deliver preterm babies is higher in proteins and calories — a vivid testimony to how the milk of a species changes to ensure the survival of the young of that species. Supermilk for early babies — how exciting!
While the nutritional benefits of breastfeeding are important for premature babies, the immunological benefits are even more critical. Breast milk protects these babies against bacteria and viruses that their own immune systems cannot cope with. In addition, human milk is the perfect first feeding for immature gastrointestinal tracts. Human milk offers protection against necrotizing enterocolities, a life-threatening bowel disease that affects premature babies. Your baby’s neonatologist may order that baby’s diet of human milk be fortified or supplemented with a commercial product. This is because in order to grow as they did in the womb, very young preemies may need larger amounts of some nutrients than mother’s milk can provide.…