Tips for New Moms: Breastfeeding and Cluster Feeding
I’m going to hop on a soap box for just a minute so bear with me.
Breastfeeding. It may be one of the most beautiful yet daunting words in the world of a new mom. Breastfeeding can be one of the most wonderful things about the newborn phase, but it can also be one of the hardest. I think one way society has failed moms is by telling them that breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world. For some moms, it may be and it may be easy from the get go. However, for many moms, breastfeeding and the demands that come along with it are just plain hard. Until we, as a society, normalize talking about how hard breast feeding can be, we will continue to fail new moms. New moms need to hear that even when things are going “well”, breastfeeding is HARD and is a demand on a mom’s body that has never been put on it before.
End Soap Box
Everyday in my job, I answer multiple questions about breastfeeding and the same ones come up over and over again, so let’s jump into those here.
Breastfed or not, babies need to eat AT LEAST 8-12x in a 24 hour period. That means, they need to feed every 2-3 hours. That is expected and necessary. When babies are born, their bellies are only about the size of a cherry, which means it cannot hold very much. It takes the first few days of life for their bellies to stretch to the size of taking a “full feed”. What that means is while mom’s body is slowly starting to make more and more milk, their baby’s belly is stretching with each feed as that process happens.
Here are some things I hear every day:
I am trying to breastfeed but am only getting drops of milk at this point. He/she has to need more than that at this point. Should I start giving formula?
There are many factors that affect if I recommend supplementing with formula, which is a conversation for another day. I tell these parents that it is 100% expected to only have “drops” of milk in the first 1-3 days of life and honestly, most babies don’t need more than that IF they are transferring milk well. Those drops are called colostrum, which is an extremely nutrient dense early milk. It takes 3-5 days for a mom’s breast milk to “come in”. This may happen faster if it is not your first baby, but it is expected that mom’s don’t have a lot of milk in the first 3 days after birth. Let’s remember how big baby’s belly is at this point. Here is the catch. The more you put baby to breast, the faster that milk is going to come in. Think supply and demand, which brings us to…
What is cluster feeding?
Cluster feeding most commonly happens on nights 2 and 3 of life. Babies tend to be very sleepy for the first 24 hours of life because coming into the world is hard work! After the 24 hour mark, they realize their free food source of the placenta is long gone and they need to start working to eat. Then enters cluster feeding. Babies start feeding in “clusters” or many times close together before taking a “break” for 2-3 hours. Babies tend to eat off and on for 2-4 hours and then sleep well. Unfortunately, this tends to occur at night and is exhausting for new parents. Parents tend to feel like their babies are “never satisfied” or “full”. Cluster feeding serves a purpose which is:
Your baby’s way of signaling your body that it needs to make more milk to sustain their needs and
The way your baby’s stomach stretches to accommodate bigger feeds eventually.
The bright side is that once your milk comes in, cluster feeding tends to vanish until your baby hits a growth spurt; the first of which usually being around 2 weeks of life.
Cluster feeding nights are long. Cluster feeding is hard. Mom’s tend to feel like a human pacifier. Which is why during the nights of cluster feeding is the most common time I get the question about when it is “okay” to introduce a pacifier. We will cover that topic soon!
