During this week, World Breastfeeding Week, WHO has offered information and some advice, recalling what are the official recommendations that, for more than ten years, have not yet varied.
The recommendation, what nature has planned for a baby, is to take breast milk exclusively for 6 months, as the main food, but accompanied by other foods up to 12 months and as one more food until at least two years.
But this is not all, because this year they wanted to go further and explained that when the mother sleeps away from the baby, when they separate for whatever reason, breast milk production decreases.
This, obviously, is to put a small lock on breastfeeding, whose success depends on many factors.
Breastfeeding can be successful, but it does not support many obstacles
What do I mean by this obstacle? Well, breastfeeding may work well from the beginning, but it may end up failing if factors that endanger it are gradually added. If everything goes well and the mother sleeps separately from the baby, it is possible that she will continue to do well.
But if sleeping separately from your baby we add that someone gives you a bottle for the day, that the mother separates from the baby because she works eight hours, that from the beginning they have tried to let the baby suck according to schedules or that the baby is limited while at the chest, to give some examples, it is more possible that breastfeeding ends up failing and do not reach even the first six months of exclusive breastfeeding.
Sleep apart from the baby?
So is. I think it's not the norm, I think most parents sleep with their babies for at least six months (or more), with a bassinet next to the bed, a crib or sleeping in the same bed as the parents. However, and it still amazes me, from time to time there are cases of parents who apply the Estivill method to babies less than a month old, of couples who let the baby cry in their room until they fall, or simply, of babies who they stay in another room so that they learn to be alone as soon as possible and then do not want to spend the night with the parents (which seems to be seen as a sacrilege and an error for the proper maturation of an individual).
The problem is that when you separate from the baby the shots are less frequent. The baby is farther from the mother, smells less and consequently demands fewer shots. In addition, when he cries a little, when he asks for a chest, he often receives a pacifier and caresses to keep him sleeping as soon as possible or, in the worst case, a "wait a little, don't go yet, to see if he sleeps and thing is not going anymore. " If the baby is eager to eat, he will cry more and more. If you are as hungry as you are, or more sleepy than hungry, you may fall asleep without having eaten, and there the baby will have lost a shot, and his mother's breast as well.
And you know, breast milk works according to demand. More demand, more supply. In addition, it is known that at night women secrete more prolactin, which is the hormone responsible for making milk. The more prolactin, the more milk. And consequently, more nighttime shots, more prolactin and more milk. That is, babies have to breastfeed at night to ensure food the next day (and the following days), and in fact they do, or ask for it. Another thing is that they are breastfed.
That is why the recommendation is to give chest on demand, no schedules, also at night, when the baby asks for it, and that is why from time to time we are reminded of what the demand is, to explain that if the baby is crying, you are late.
And to prevent her from crying, to be attentive to the first groans, to breastfeed when she needs it, to take her chest as soon as possible and, consequently, fall asleep as soon as possible, the logical and advisable thing is for mother and baby to sleep nearby. The separation is a modern advice of the West, a consequence of an increasingly individualistic, competitive and selfish society, in which it seems that you have more future living alone and without emotional ties that generate minimal dependence.
