Our birth class on Sunday was all about babies and what to expect from our bodies after birth! I'll stick to talking about babies in this blog post because the other stuff is, well, more than you would probably care to hear about :)
We talked about everything from feeding to swaddling to diapering to baby wearing. It was so fun and interesting! Most interesting to us was what we learned about feeding:
1. It's perfectly fine to have a glass or two of wine or one to two beers per day while you are breastfeeding and there is no need to "pump and dump" the milk. I'm sure you could find some studies trying to scare moms into thinking the opposite, but the ladies we heard from and some solid doctors agree that so long as you're not dancing on the table with a lampshade on your head, your milk is really fine. Wine! Yessss!
2. At birth, a baby's stomach capacity is that of a marble. Yes indeedy doo. That's why Moms are encouraged to wake up their babies to eat every two to three hours. That stomach can only hold a little.
3. In the first two to three weeks of breastfeeding, you "program" your body to produce the right amount of milk for up to one year from that time. This is why frequent, complete feedings are essential in the first few weeks. If you supplement with formula too early and don't pump to make up for that supplementing, your body will get the impression that it doesn't need to make as much milk and so it won't. Then several weeks later you'll wonder why you can't make enough milk.
4. Babies only really need breastmilk for the first six months of life. No water, no sugar water, nothing but the milk. The magic is that there is foremilk and hindmilk, kind of like skim milk and cream. With each swallow the baby takes during a feeding, the fat content of the milk increases. Isn't that amazing? So they quench their thirst with foremilk and fill their bellies with hindmilk and that's all they need.
Well, that's our feeding trivia for the day! It's time for me to stop dreaming about holding Emma and a glass of wine and get back to work.
