Fig. 29.—A comfortable position for mother and baby, while nursing in bed.
You must be prepared to find the early attempts to nurse your baby far from satisfactory, but if you persevere in making attempts regularly, you will almost certainly succeed.
During the first two or three days the baby obtains only colostrum while nursing, but the regular suckling is extremely important, not alone for the sake of getting him into the habit of nursing but because his suckling is the best and surest means of stimulating your breasts to produce milk. And, as we shall see in a moment, the irritation of the nipples in this manner so definitely promotes desirable changes in the uterus that these go on more rapidly in women who nurse their babies than in those who do not.
Fig. 30.—Protecting cracked or sore nipples by having the baby nurse through a shield.
If your nipples are not sufficiently prominent for the baby to grasp them, or if they become sore, you may have to use a shield for a while as shown in Figs. [30] and 31, but the shield should be discarded as soon as possible for it is the baby’s suckling that produces the desired effects. If a shield is used, it should be washed and boiled after each nursing and kept in a sterile jar or solution of boracic acid, between times.
The length of the nursing periods, and the intervals between them, are decided upon by the doctor according to the needs and condition of each baby: his weight, vigor, the rapidity with which he nurses, the character of his stools and his general condition. The length of the nursing periods themselves, is usually from ten to twenty minutes, the intervals between them being measured from the beginning of one feeding to the beginning of the next, and are fairly uniform for babies of the same age and weight.
Fig. 31.—Nipple shield used in Fig.
[30].