Dear Friends:
    I don't ever teach pregnant women about colostrum. I hate it when I work
with a new bf mom who tells me, sighing, that she gave her baby a bottle
because he nursed 5 times in the past 2 hours because she must not have any
milk, she only has colostrum.
    Teach women that they get milk in their breasts around the third month of
pregnancy. After delivery, they get more milk, and more and more. There is
always milk there. So what if it is a different color! The important thing is
that baby go to breast and transfer this milk comfortably, not what it is
called.
    I also hate the phrase "milk coming in"......which reinforces the idea
that there wasn't milk before. And one day, it just comes in (note tongue in
cheek here....we need an emoticon for that. Any ideas?  How about :  (\
    Phrases and terms such as "colostrum" and "milk coming in" only confuse
mothers with unnecessary ideas.
    And while I am on this rant.....
    How many of us drive a car every day, with utterly no knowledge of how
the engine works or what the parts are called? We know when it isn't working
though. So with new mothers: they don't need to know what all the parts are
called, they need to know how to drive.
    It is a waste of time to teach folks about things they don't need to
know. If she is going to leave our prenatal class with only three ideas, do
we want "clusters of grapes" and "colostrum" to be 2 of them?
    Warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MSN, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CIMI
craniosacral therapy practitioner; childbirth educator
Elkins Park (a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; northeastern USA)
supporter of the WHO Code and the Mother Friendly Childbirth Initiative

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