Breastfeeding keeps me awake

[mrsbrown]

I hate the pillow style of breastfeeding. Every woman I've seen who uses a pillow to rest their baby on while they breastfeed is someone who hasn't chilled enough to just enjoy their baby and breastfeeding relationship. You don't see Madonna and Child paintings with the Child resting on a pillow to raise him to breast height. (Actually, you do, but not often.

The nicest thing I saw at my recent family christmas 'do' was my brother-in-law snuggled into a couch with his daughter, feeding her with a bottle. He had that social veil between them and the rest of the world and the baby was his entire focus. My sister, with her pillow based technique of breastfeeding, never appears to get that close to the baby.

One of my favourite ways to breastfeed Rose is when she has no clothes on and I pull up my top so we have skin to skin contact. I sit on the couch and wrap her body around mine, and put my feet on the couch so my legs are wrapped around her in turn. I put on my madonna face and enjoy her.

Comments

[astemudfoot.livejournal.com]

I think the breastfeeding on a cushion thing is a misdirection. I mean, it can be nice on occasion when the baby is smaller (but not neccisary), but they forget to tell you that when baby is big enough to reach your breast while laying in your lap it will just get in the way and you don't need it anymore.

[monstah.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was the method you used when you had large breasts....so the poor little bugger doesn't smother to death and you don't get RSI. Apparently one of the largest groups at risk from RSI is breast feeding women!

[jadeluxe.livejournal.com]

i still use the pillow but i can see it's got to go soon...rufus is just about the perfect size for me to balance him on my lap :) i've never heard the large breast/smothering theory. i do have large breasts but i doubt the pillow would prevent me smothering him.

i feel that i'm very chilled and do enjoy our breastfeeding relationship, but i started using the pillow because i found him too damn heavy to get at the right height when i was sitting in the armchair. in fact at the start i used two pillows, then one, and now i only sometimes use it. of course i don't use it when i lay down feeding him, but i didn't do that so much at the start because i was so tired and also indoctrinated by those people who told me i could fall asleep while feeding and suffocate him. then my mum told me to lay down and feed him as often as i can because he's so greedy and it would make him work harder for the feed and he wouldn't have litres of milk running down his face, and make me over-produce :) seemed to work.

now that he's big though (seriously, he's so big...nine weeks old, and last time i weighed him, which was two weeks ago, he was 8.5kg!!) it's far easier for all concerned if we just feed on the armchair again. i'm jealous of the mothers at mothers club with their tiny little babies they can feed in any position and using one hand. maybe if i was an olympic weightlifter. and re your brother-in-law, i am also jealous that joel can have such good eye contact with rufus when he gives him a bottle. i can barely see him over the aforementioned large breasts.

and if i take all his clothes off, he just pees all over me. sometimes i let him though because his bum is so cute :)

all in all though, an amazing experience for me. i marvel all the time that i can sustain another human. and then other times i think i'm being a bit overblown since half the world's been doing it since the dawn of time. i'm quite into it though! :)

[beerwulf.livejournal.com]

So long as it's only a Madonna face and not a Madonna maternity bra...

[nobble.livejournal.com]

Never used a pillow, found it always to cumbersome and clumsy and was easier to hold Reuben. He was so tiny weeny when he was born. He's such a bruiser now. I'm surprised I made it to 20 months feeding him. No wonder I nearly went bonkers.