by Lorriellah

Created on: November 21, 2009

Breast feeding has many benefits for both mother and baby and at the moment the bonuses of this way of feeding your baby is trying to be pushed by the health system to become more popular. At the moment bottle feeding dominates the feeding of babies and this trying to be turned around by the government and the health care system. Breast feeding, however, is very difficult and people can experience many problems with establishing and so the aim of this review is to give you some tips and

advice from what I have learnt. I didn't know anything about breast feeding before I had my baby and I didn't want to hear the 'facts' from professionals as I felt as though they were just trying to reach targets and weren't giving me the full information. I would much rather have had the information given to me by new mum's who would be more open and honest so I would know more about what to expect.

one fact which I was told at my local support group was that in our area only 30% of mums start breast feeding and then by the time the baby is 10 days old that figure drops to just 10% this just shows how difficult breast feeding is both with latching issues and as well as the fact that it is still seen as tabboo so it can be difficult to feel as though you can feed your baby in public

Before

Before I had my baby I had no idea about whether I would breast feed or not. To be honest I didn't really have an opinion on the matter. I didn't prepare for it, I just thought I would see how it went, I'd give it a go and if it worked I would do so and if it didn't then I would bottle feed instead.
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What I found was that every time I saw the midwife or other health professionals the bonuses of breast feeding was thrown at me. I felt as though if I didn't breast feed then people would look down their noses at me as though I was deliberately chosing to harm my baby or something. I grew quite fed up of hearing all the information being thrown at me as it made me feel as though I was under great pressue.
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I attended NCT antenatal classes which are all very pro breast feeding. It surprised me therefore that the 2 hour class we had dedicated to breast feeding lacked information. We were mainly told to look out for mastitis and the benefits of breast feeding. The actual techniques or challenges of breast feeding never came up or if they did they were so subtly touched upon that I never noticed! It is fair to say that I entered motherhood completely unaware of what breast feeding entailed.

Benefits

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