Expert Quick Tips about Breast Feeding and Co-sleeping

Camilla Conti is a lactation specialist and a mother of two lovely naughty kids. They were born naturally and she exclusively breastfed them for six months, then breastfed for so much longer than that (and tandem fed!) along with appropriate complementary foods. She shares some important tips on co-sleeping with your baby and breastfeeding them at night.

  1. You don’t have to get up and rush to another room to console a cranky, desperate baby. All you have to do is offer the breast to your baby and happily fall back asleep with him/her.
  2. Human babies have small stomachs and they need small and frequent feeds of a perfectly balanced and easy-to-digest food: breastmilk is all of this – Naturally the same need applies to the night.
  3. When a child sleeps with her mother, she will wake up to breastfeed like all children do but she will fall asleep much faster.
  4. A baby whose cry is promptly responded to and whose need for touch is satisfied will be less irritable and will grow emotionally secure.
  5. Sleeping together (co-sleeping) and breastfeeding foster your bond with your baby and make you more responsive to her clues.
  6. When mother and baby sleep together their sleeping patterns become synchronized: their phases of light/deep sleep coincide. This makes waking up easier and less stressful for the mother.
  7. While sleeping with their mother, newborn children ‘learn’ to tune their own breathing patterns on hers. This helps their respiratory system mature and makes nights safer by reducing apnea episodes.
  8.  Co-sleeping and breastfeeding during the night have been associated with a lower risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
  9. Breastfeeding during the night raises prolactin levels. Prolactin is the hormone responsible for milk production: night feeding boosts your milk supply.
  10. Too long gaps between feeds might reduce your milk supply and also affect lactation amenorrhea (lactation-related infertility). This might expose you to the risk of a new unplanned early pregnancy.

— Camilla Conti —

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