Conversations about breastfeeding
A story of Maria Dosmukhamedova, Electrical Engineer
My oldest daughter is 16 years old. When she was born, she was immediately put "skin-to-skin" on my stomach, and after a couple of minutes, I breastfed her for the first time. These simple actions, as you know, are one of the main components of successful breastfeeding.
In my environment, there were no women with experience of exclusive breastfeeding. "Feeding on demand" was something unbelievable to those with whom I spoke about it. "Why does she always suck?", "She lacks milk", "You will lose all your teeth", "After feeding, she must sleep for three hours" – that was what I heard for quite some time.
However, I am a stubborn and strong woman, and if I believe in something, it's difficult to confuse me. The Internet was my assistant. It was there that I learned that all children are different, that there is always enough milk in the breast, and the criterion is weight gain, and not how often or how much the baby sucks.
Last year, I gave birth to my younger daughter. In addition, the experience with the elder daughter helped me to breastfeed better this time. The baby was born prematurely, and there was no way to either put it directly to the breast or put it "skin-to-skin" on your stomach. What to say if I even saw her for the first time on the third day after giving the birth!
I knew that it was necessary to express the colostrum, that there is nothing better than breast milk, and I can breastfeed my child. Doctors very much helped at this difficult stage, they insisted on breastfeeding and regular expression of milk. Breast milk is vital for premature babies.
This is an amazing mechanism created by evolution, when the mother's body adapts to the needs of the child, giving as much milk as needed at any time, on-demand.
Only on the sixth day after birth, I first put the baby to the breast. This was one of the happiest moments in my life. We were lucky, my youngest has a great sucking reflex, and she immediately figured out what to do and how. The first night, she was applied to the breast every hour, and again I heard: "She lacks milk", but my experience told me that everything would work out well, that this is a stage of accustoming for my child. This is an amazing mechanism created by evolution, when the mother's body adapts to the needs of the child, giving as much milk as needed at any time, on-demand.
