Happy Days » Breastfeeding

QUESTION: My son is now 5 months and 2 weeks. I am exclusively breastfeeding still but am hitting some major walls. He will still only drink from 1 breast apart from going to  bed at 6pm. That is the only time he will have a good feed. I have tried both feeding every 2 hours and also to stretch him 4 hourly to see if he will drink better but it makes no difference. He wakes every 2 hours at night, and has never slept through. I tried to start solids 1 week ago, but it seems he hats it. Spits it out, screams if I force the spoon in...

QUESTION: I am the mother of a 9 week old baby boy. I have been expressing and freezing breastmilk as I have to go back to work in two months time. After attending the Baby Sense Seminar this past weekend and hearing how the milk changes over the months I decided to start defrosting the oldest “stock” and freezing the fresh milk so as to keep my frozen supply appropriate. My son is refusing the defrosted milk – from me and others. He still drinks fresh milk from a bottle so the problem does not lie with the bottle. ANSWER: It is great that you are looking to persist with breast milk...

Almost every mom’s greatest challenge is a full night sleep in the first year! We crave sleep and look forward to the day (or night) when we know no one will wake us at 2am for a feed, nappy change, cuddle or dummy! In an attempt to get a full night’s sleep, many a mom will look to formula feeds to help her little one ‘sleep through the night’. The big question is does breastfeeding negatively affect sleep? The answer is that how and what your baby is fed will affect her sleep BUT a breastfed baby can sleep just as well as any other baby. Here are the ways breastfeeding affects sleep: The...

Q: My little girl is now almost 5 months old.  I am still breastfeeding her during night and express milk during the day whilst I’m at work.  She started solids about 3 weeks ago and it is going very well.  I do however think that she drinks a little bit too much milk during the (she stays with my mother in law).  I store the expressed milk in sachets of 100ml of which she drinks 5 or 6 during the day.  She has a small bowl of Nestum at about 08h00 and then a veg (half a Purity bottle) at 13h00 and the other half at 17h30.   Then I breastfeed her between 18h30...

Making sense of feeding your newborn can be a daunting task. But with the help of a few basic guidelines, and the expert advice of Ann Richardson, you can soon establish what’s best for you and baby. The underlying principle when it comes to feeding is not which method you use to feed your baby, but that the choice is right for you both. Let’s start by discussing the two methods available for feeding your child. Breast is best In the young baby (under 6 months), from a nutritional point of view, breast is best. There is no better food for your baby than your own breast milk. The milk that you...