Breastfeeding

Think back to when your babies were born—what happened in that first hour after birth?  Did you hold your baby?  Were you encouraged to breastfeed your baby?  Or did someone take your baby away from you? 

These days most babies go directly to a health care provider for evaluation, or, if the baby is breathing and appears well, the mother will get to look at or hold the baby for a minute or two before someone whisks the baby away for “necessary” medical care.  

I’ve heard many a horror-story about flying with breast milk, from security agents that forced moms to dump out milk to broken bottles.  I’ve also made a few mistakes myself, once causing me to throw out several days of expressed milk.  I’ve taken countless business trips while breastfeeding my four children, and these my tips for successful traveling with breast milk. 

I was taught in medical school never to leave a newborn delivery without discussing birth control with the new mother.  The exhausted, delighted mothers and smiling fathers would always give the physician a puzzled look when asked, minutes after delivery, what their birth control plans were.  It seemed like a rude, dark interruption of the joyful fleeting moments after the miracle of birth.

My 3-year-old’s pre-school teacher pulled me aside one day after school.  My daughter and a friend had been putting dolls in their dresses, pretending to be pregnant, then pulling the dolls out from between their legs, and then pretending to breastfeed.  “We weren’t sure what to do!” the perplexed teacher laughed.  Eventually, she said, the teachers decided to redirect the girls into a different activity.