Dear all:

I wish I could say that the kitchy little sayings don't make a difference.   Unfortunately, about 80% of the problems I see in my practice are from someone following some kitchy little saying. And I have seen more than a few mothers with eating disorders use those kitchy little sayings as justification for not feeding their baby enough.  They will often cling to anything that will support withholding food from their infant.  I would not have posted about this if it were just a matter of language.  In fact, language does count and it is because of the consequences of how some parents interpret language that I posted about it.

Here is a sampling:

1) Never wake a sleeping baby: I've seen many many cases of babies whose mothers had high intervention deliveries, then fail to thrive  because the mother didn't realize her baby was not waking due to the lethargy of poor intake.
2)  ALways make sure your baby finishes the first breast so the baby gets the hind milk.  I've seen MANY mothers interpret this as don't offer until the baby lets go of the breast.  As a result I've seen babies that fail to thrive in the initial stages because they were too tired to swallow on the first breast and conked out before they got to the 2nd breast and never stimulated the mother's supply initially.  I've also seen even more babies at later phases of lactation when everything had been going perfectly fine and there really were no problems, but mom heard this advice and stopped offering the second breast and ended up losing their milk supply because their babies really did need the second breast and their supply dropped when they stopped offering it.
3) Babies should get the fatty part of the milk.  I've seen many mothers following the book that tells them to use breast compressions on one breast for 20 minutes and then pump the other breast.  This creates a huge amount of excess milk, throws both mom and baby out of sync with each other and sometimes, because the mom is storing the excess milk, the baby still fails to thrive.
4) Babies will sleep better if you give them a big feed before bed.  I've seen a huge increase in the amounts of breast milk offered from the bottle before bedtime and drops in supply because mothers are trying to drop to too few feeds per day.  I'd say this is the biggest cause of premature weaning I encounter among mothers of 3-6 month olds.  Plus I find a lot of mothers actually sleep worse because they are up with their babies who are then suffering from indigestion from a too big meal.

I would probably never have posted unless I were seeing actual negative consequences among my clientele.

Best, Susan Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC 

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