Breastfeeding Tips for Working Mothers
A working mom can easily keep breastfeeding. How can she do it?
Work or motherhood?
Many mothers wean the baby because they have to return to work. It is difficult to keep breastfeeding if you are away from home for 10-12 hours. Nevertheless, the World Health Organization strongly recommends breastfeeding as long as possible, possibly up to two years, and taking every opportunity to maintain breastfeeding, which is a huge contribution to the normal development of the baby. In short, work is not a hindrance for the kids to get the most valuable mother’s milk and to grow up healthy and happy.
Almost all breastfeeding women who are planning to go to work think that they would have to stop breastfeeding. Such conclusions are not groundless – during the day, the baby will have to drink from a bottle, and you cannot be sure if it will want to take the breast after such substitution. However, breastfeeding and making money are quite compatible concepts; we will describe how to combine them.
Is it possible to combine work and breastfeeding?
Psychologists say that women can return to work at least 4 months after giving birth, because before that time, the child considers the mother as its inalienable part, and her long absence can cause the baby stress. A woman who is planning to go to work needs to know her rights and be sure to warn the boss about her plans to breastfeed – nursing mothers, for example, can require additional breaks during the workday.
A grandmother or a nanny who will take care of the baby when the mother is away will have to feed it from a bottle most of the day. Nowadays, you can make stocks of breast milk and keep them up to six months at low temperatures. So, a breastfeeding mother should have a good breast pump, sterile bags, a quality bottle with an anatomical pacifier, and a powerful freezer. It is better to start expressing milk for about a month before returning to work, so that by the day it becomes necessary, the process would be quite simple and familiar. Make good stocks of frozen milk so that the baby has enough healthy food.
Weaning your baby
The choice of the bottle from which the baby will be fed in the absence of its mother is very important. When buying a bottle, give preference to ones with physiological pacifiers –they exclude the possibility of nipple confusion, when the baby accustomed to the pacifier refuses to take the mother’s breast. Modern bottles, designed on the basis of extensive research in breastfeeding let the kid perform natural sucking movements and completely exclude the possibility of refusing the breast.
When the mother plans to go to work without stopping breastfeeding, there are a few tricky but solvable issues. In order to successfully breastfeed after returning to work, you need to establish normal breastfeeding right from the baby’s birth. While mom is at work, she should express in accordance with the baby’s regimen (every 2-3 hours), to ensure the required amount of milk to feed the child the next day.
The less time the mother spends with the baby, the more care she needs to give it in those happy moments together. In the morning and in the evening you should definitely breastfeed your baby –physical and emotional bond between the mother and child is extremely important, especially in the first years of life. Only during breastfeeding, the baby feels mother’s protection, and you should not deprive it of this pleasure.
