The tips below can make it easier for you to feed your baby, right from the start.
Rooming in
Keeping your baby in the room with you will help you learn their cues and respond to their needs. This is the first time your baby will be outside of your womb, and they will be just learning how to communicate. By rooming in, you will have more time for skin-to-skin and feeding practices. You may be thinking that you won't get as much rest with them in the room with you. But, don't worry. Research shows parents get just as much or more rest when they room in with their babies.
Did You Know?
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative encourages rooming in 24 hours a day. The exception would be if there were medical or safety reasons preventing rooming in.
Watching for Hunger Cues
Whenever your baby gets hungry, you will be there! They will have a tiny stomach and will need to eat often (10 or more times each day). With each feeding, their stomach will grow, and they will be able to eat more. Your baby will give you cues to tell you when they are hungry. To learn more about hunger cues take the lesson, Understanding Your Newborn: Sleep, Crying, and Cues in this series.
Did You Know?
You can make bottle feeding more like breast or chestfeeding by doing “paced feeding." Paced feeding is a way to give your baby more control over how much they drink and avoid overfeeding them. Paced feeding is when your baby is in more of an upright position, rather than tilted back. When feeding your baby, make sure the bottle nipple is not completely full of milk. Your baby should be pacing the feeding. This means taking occasional breaks where they can pause the feeding. Then they can decide if they want more or are finished with the feeding. To see paced bottle feeding in action, check out this video!
Visitors
While in the hospital, caring for your baby and yourself will be your top priority. With that in mind, you can accept (or turn away) as many visitors as you decide is right. Ask the hospital staff for uninterrupted time from visitors and staff when you need to get some rest. Communicate what you want with your birthing partner. This way they can share the information with staff when you are too tired to do so.
If you do decide to accept visitors, it will be your decision how much you allow others to hold your baby. Your loved ones will be excited to see and hold them. That does not mean they get to hold them for hours on end. It will be most important for your baby to get as much bonding and skin-to-skin time with you as possible. It will also be important that you get enough alone time to start learning your baby’s cues and how to feed them. If you decide to let visitors hold your baby, make sure they wash their hands with soap and water before they hold them.
Safe handling of bottles and formula
All bottles and nipples will need to be sterilized before they are used for the first time. Bottles will collect bacteria if they are not cleaned well. Learn more about how to safely handle bottles and formula.
Flora are the good bacteria moms share with their babies during skin-to-skin and through breastfeeding.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is a worldwide program that assists hospitals in giving mothers the information, confidence, and skills necessary to reach their infant feeding goals.
Breast or chestfeeding are both ways to describe a parent feeding a baby human milk from their breast or chest.