Truly Happy Baby ... It Worked for Me: A practical parenting guide from a mum you can trust

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Going back to work: can you still breastfeed? …

It is possible to breastfeed and go back to work. I’ve done it. I’ve been in dressing rooms pumping milk and putting it in the fridge until I get home, and many of my colleagues have done the same. My make-up artist filled the This Morning fridge with her breast milk carefully labelled up so as not to confuse it with someone else’s … and so it didn’t end up in Phillip’s tea!

If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to keep up a good milk supply by expressing at regular intervals, or as best you can during your working day. If you’re unlucky, your supply might start to wane, and this does happen frequently. If you are one of the unlucky ones, don’t be too down on yourself. You’ve already done such an amazing job feeding your baby and given her a wonderful start in life. Once she sees your face come through that front door, she won’t be thinking about what form her next feed takes and I imagine you’ll feel the same (and probably start flooding the place before you’ve even said hello!).

Some of my mummy friends got into a routine of only breastfeeding the first feed of the day, and the last feed before bed. If you do this regularly enough your milk supply will respond, and even if nothing’s coming in all day it will be there when you get home. It’s all very clever!

ROUTINES: WHAT WORKED FOR ME

On the following pages are the routines I used for all of my babies, which I hope will be a good starting point for you and yours. A few things to bear in mind for all of them:

First, these feeding routines are all loosely based on your baby’s day beginning at 7am! If it’s 6am, everything will be an hour earlier – but if she wakes earlier than 6am, feed her and put her back to sleep, then start your day properly at 7am.

Second, the best way to tell whether your breastfed or formula-fed baby is getting enough milk is to monitor her weight, which you will do alongside the health visitor and by taking your baby to the health clinic for regular checks (see here (#ulink_53a4c5ce-4001-574f-b3cf-781df59d5635)). You’ll be told how often you need to go, but if your baby is gaining weight well you may only need to go once a month. With Harry and Belle, I used to really look forward to going to see how all our hard work was paying off. There’s nothing lovelier than getting a pat on the back from the clinic as they tell you how perfectly your baby is progressing. And whilst it was a different story with Chester, it was equally useful to get the reassurance and advice we both needed.

Third, there are days, even whole weeks, when your perfect baby will completely drop her routine. This is particularly common when a baby is poorly. Believe me, as soon as your baby gets the slightest snuffle, everything goes out of the window. Or she might be going through a growth spurt and suddenly need more food than normal. You need to try to work out what the reasons are and respond accordingly with either more or less food and cuddles. Just don’t despair. You’ll get your golden routine back in a few days, when her appetite comes back and she’s not too bunged up to sleep!

Finally, I think it’s a really good idea to keep a feeding and pooing diary. Sounds delightful! But seriously, for the first few weeks, day and night all roll into one so it’s worth keeping a note of things – or you can now even get apps that help you keep a record of everything. Let alone what breast your baby last fed off or how much of her bottle she took, you’re unlikely to remember when she last did a poo or had a wet nappy and how long she slept. Keep a record for YOU too. For example, if you’re on painkillers after a Caesarean, keep a little table of when you last took tablets and when your next ones are due. You’ll be amazed how four hours can slip by – you could swear you only fed two hours ago! Without keeping a record I would have been in real trouble. Baby brain and all that! Make life easier for yourself. Don’t attempt to keep these sorts of things in your head!

Helpful hints At this very early age, don’t put pressure on yourself to stick to these times. Your baby is so young and there’s plenty of time to get her into a routine. Something to bear in mind is that babies who are solely breastfed might need to feed more often than formula-fed babies, who often sleep longer between feeds. But, in general, your little one will need her little tummy fed every three to four hours.

Hungry cry Hungry cries are often accompanied by a baby clenching her fists and bringing them towards her face. A good way to tell when your baby has had enough to eat is when her hands relax and fall wide open.

Helpful hints As the weeks go by, you’re looking for your baby to go longer and longer between feeds. The first step is to try to get her to have a full feed where she empties the bottle or breast every time, so that she can last longer before she is hungry again. Then when she does feed again, she’ll be hungry enough to complete the next feed so that she doesn’t need to snack in between, and so on. The idea is that if your baby has had enough complete, regular feeds during the daytime, she’ll get to a point where she doesn’t need to wake for a feed during the night.

At this stage, your baby is still so young so, again, don’t put pressure on falling into a routine. Sometimes it’s tough to make your baby go longer between feeds, and the best piece of advice I can give you is that you should ask yourself a few questions, just to be sure you haven’t missed anything before you feed your baby earlier than necessary. Is your baby really crying because she’s hungry? Does she need a nappy change or just a cuddle? Did she have enough to eat at her last feed or is she hungry now because she fell asleep after a few minutes and you didn’t wake her to finish the bottle? After the first six weeks or so, if you continue to feed your baby every time she starts to cry you’ll find she only ever takes small amounts as it’s more of a snack than a full feed.

Helpful hints Since your baby arrived, you’ve probably been feeding her on demand, perhaps expressing some feeds or giving her formula. However you’ve decided to feed your baby, try to get to a point where you’re leaving three to four hours between feeds. This is the way you teach your baby to fill up enough at a feed, to sleep longer between feeds and ultimately be able to sleep for long stretches through the night without needing to wake for a top-up. By the time all of mine were three months old, whether breastfed or bottle-fed, they were on a four-hourly feeding schedule, but that’s just what worked for me. You’ll end up forming your own schedules to suit your life. And don’t be downhearted if it takes you and your baby longer to get to grips with a routine – everyone is different and that’s how it should be!

Think of the four-hourly routine as a helpful framework for you to work with – if nothing else, it will give you a rough idea of when you last fed without having to keep writing it all down. It may not always work – some weeks your baby may be hungrier than others and, if you’re breastfeeding, may want to cluster feed through the night. Cluster feeding is when your baby wakes for lots of feeds much closer together than usual. Young babies do this a lot, and no one really knows why. It could be your baby’s way of encouraging you to produce more milk so that there’s more to fill her up. This can be exhausting for you, and you’ll often feel like it’s never going to end and you’re destined to be this feeding machine for the rest of time! Just know that it won’t last forever and the good news is that it will lead to you producing oodles of milk to satisfy your baby – think how much sleep you’ll both get then!

Always be guided by your baby. If you have a baby who wakes at 6am every morning, start your 24-hour clock from then. I just found that the 7am routine really worked for me. Your body gets used to a routine very quickly and you’ll be shocked how you check to see what time it is and discover it’s 11am or 3pm on the dot and feed time. Your body instinctively gave you a little prod. You probably won’t even need to look at the clock!

By having a set timetable you know when the next feed is – you remember the four golden numbers 7, 11, 3 and 7!

One of the best things about getting my babies in a four-hourly feeding routine – in my case 7am/11am/3pm and 7pm – was it finally meant I stopped having to ask myself or Dan when I last fed the baby! Baby brain is definitely not a myth – whether it’s down to all the hormones or just lack of sleep, you can have finished a feed an hour ago, and then forget immediately what time you began the last feed and completely lose track of time.

Be adaptable The four-hour feeding routine is all about trying to find that key balance between being too flexible and not flexible enough! Being too flexible with your baby might mean you struggle to set a feeding and sleeping routine further down the line, but not being flexible enough is likely to stress you out. It’s about bearing the guidelines in mind, but adapting them to suit you and your baby.

Helpful hints This routine will seem like a dream before you get there. An unbroken night’s sleep! Perfect! Exactly your goal. Having said that, if your baby is a bit more stubborn, don’t give up. She’ll get there eventually and so will you. If your baby is still waking at night, don’t be discouraged. Just ask yourself those troubleshooting questions I gave you in the Pre-routine Hints (#litres_trial_promo) to check you’re doing all the right things during the day to prepare your baby for a good night’s sleep. Weaning (see here (#ulink_32daced1-9648-587b-8b51-4bc03fb4f070)) can help with that as solids don’t get digested as quickly as liquids, keeping your baby’s tummy from rumbling for longer. Whatever your situation, perhaps this little piece of information might make you feel better – or more determined to get your baby into a routine. My mum will tell anyone who will listen how I didn’t sleep through the night until I was four and a half years old. Imagine that! Rather not? No, me neither! On the plus side, I can sleep for England now … or at least I could until I had babies!

Getting babies off bottles …

By the time your baby gets to about six months old she will naturally want to start copying you, even down to the way you drink. If she reaches for your water cup, let her try to take a sip. Your baby will want to move on as much as you want her to, so be guided by her newfound interest. Give her a beaker or sippy cup with a hard spout and lid at mealtimes so she can help herself and get used to drinking out of something other than a bottle.

When your baby is getting old enough for solid food it’s time to start dropping bottles. So to give you some idea, here’s what I did with Chester, from about six months:

Then I gradually dropped the 11am feed, so he was just having three bottles in 24 hours. At eleven months I dropped the 3pm feed, so he was on two bottles at 7am and 7pm. At twelve months I dropped the 7am bottle and he just had a sippy cup with milk at breakfast, but be guided by what you think your baby needs all the way along. I left in that 7pm bedtime bottle for a while, as that’s such a snuggly and cosy time and I really think it helped to settle him.

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Feeding solutions Hopefully your experience of feeding your new baby will go without a hitch, but there are a few things that can get in the way, particularly if you are breastfeeding. You might also learn that your baby has a medical reason for finding feeding tricky, such as tongue-tie or reflux, which I know all about having gone through them with Chester! These arise mostly in younger babies, and you’re likely to need medical help to overcome them. In this section you’ll find some of the most common issues you might face and some possible solutions to help you get on track. Never hesitate to seek the help of your GP or health visitor should you need to.

BREASTFEEDING ISSUES

Sore nipples: miracle-cure ingredient – lanolin! If your nipples are sore and raw, slather on a good lanolin cream. Tons of it! I put it on after every feed and it’s honestly the only thing that helped. There is so much conflicting advice on how to treat sore nipples: everything from let them air dry, hang ’em in the wind, to putting cabbage leaves in your bra. Try these if you want to, but I always thought of chafed nipples like chapped lips and you wouldn’t leave those to heal themselves in the air. Your nipples need moisturising – they need loads of lanolin cream, followed by a breast pad and bra. Another great thing is that you don’t need to wash it off as it’s safe for your baby. So get slathering! Sore nipples can sometimes lead to or be a symptom of other infections that may need medical treatment, though.

Infected nipples: see your GP For any infection, contact your GP. If your nipples are cracked, pink, shiny and itchy, and/or you find white spots/coating on your baby’s tongue or she has an ongoing nappy rash, you might have thrush. White nipple is caused by bad blood circulation around the nipple, making it appear white, and it can be agony when your baby feeds.

Pain: try nipple shields These thin, flexible covers made of silicone act like a second skin to help reduce discomfort, and they do work. I was desperate to feed Chester but it was agony because my nipples were in such a state. Wearing a shield reduced the pain enough to get me through.