Scrub your nipples with Brillo pads to toughen them up before baby is born. Breastfeeding will hurt, just get through it. If you have a glass of wine you’ll need to pump and dump. If you have small breasts you won’t be able to breastfeed exclusively. I’ve heard all of this and more, and let me tell you- none of it is true. There are so many false claims surrounding breastfeeding! How many people actually took steel wool to their poor nipples thinking it will somehow toughen them up to breastfeed? Ouch! Lets talk through some of the myths I’ve heard most often. What other advice have you heard that just didn’t sound right? Leave a comment after you read for more discussion!
If you have small breasts, you won’t achieve a full supply.
False! Breasts come in all shapes and sizes. The human race would have never survived this long if you needed a certain size or shape of breast to feed your offspring. Your breasts are made up of fatty tissue and glandular tissue. Milk is made in the glandular tissue and this type of tissue will continue to develop with each menstrual cycle until about age 35, as well as with each pregnancy. Picture your breasts like a tree, and your nipple is the trunk. You have ducts (the trunk) that branch off into lobes (think large branches). Each lobe has ductules (smaller branches) and alveoli (the leaves). Milk is made in the alveoli and is stored here until your baby triggers a letdown. Smaller breasts still have all of these proper parts, though the stores may be slightly less. You can definitely achieve a full supply as your body is constantly making milk in the alveoli. You are never actually “empty.” There is a chance you may find your baby will nurse slightly more often than the baby of someone with large breasts, however this is very unique to each parent and baby dyad. So in short, this is not true, and you should nurse on demand!
Glandular tissue of the breast. Image from https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/womens-health/multimedia/breast-cancer-early-stage/sls-20076628?s=2
Toughen up your nipples so it doesn’t hurt when baby comes!
Oh, no. No no no. Please spare yourself the agony of trying to toughen up your nipples before your baby is born! There is absolutely no need to do this. Your body knows what to do and any changes that need to happen before you have your baby will happen on their own. Your nipples will change. The areola will get larger and darker. Montgomery glands (little bumps on your areola) will get more prominent. You may start leaking colostrum toward the end of pregnancy. Toughening up, however, is not something that needs to happen.
Breastfeeding will hurt for the first few weeks.
Breastfeeding is not supposed to hurt. At all. At any point. You may have some slight discomfort, but if at any point you feel pain you need to seek help from a lactation consultant. The first few weeks of breastfeeding are hard! You are tired, and healing, and adjusting to life with a baby. Your baby will want to nurse very often and cluster feed at some point in the day or evening. You may describe breastfeeding as difficult at first, but it should not ever hurt. You will know your baby has a good latch by the way it feels. You should feel a gentle suction with no pinching or damage.
You need a good freezer stash!
This is false! There are so many posts that fly around about increasing your supply, how to get a good freezer stash going, etc. but there is no need for a huge freezer stash. You are feeding your baby, not your freezer, and you need that space for YOUR food. I recommend having about 20-30oz of an “emergency stash.” You can start collecting this around 4-6 weeks post partum, and only about an ounce per day. If you are preparing to go back to work you still don’t need a freezer stash. You need that “in case of emergency” stash (if you run late or a bottle spills for example), and then leading up to the first day you just need to pump enough to feed baby for that first day. While you are away you will pump the next days bottles. If you are building a large freezer stash you are likely creating an oversupply which can come with its own host of issues.
I thought I needed a big freezer stash and at one point I had a pretty good oversupply. I had over 300 ounces in my freezer and was never away from my baby at that time! I had no need for it. I ended up donating over 1,000 ounces to a milk bank supplying NICUs as I had no room or need for that much milk and had pumped myself into oversupply.
Breastmilk loses nutrition after one year.
I remember once hearing that after the first year breastmilk is “practically water.” This is SO SO FALSE! There are many important nutrients in breastmilk that serve baby well into toddlerhood. In an average day, breastmilk will provide a toddler:
31% of their calories
43% of their daily protein
95% of their daily Vitamin C
75% of their daily Vitamin A
44% of their calcium intake
41% of Niacin
36% of their folate
50% of their daily Iron
21% of Riboflavin
This doesn’t touch on the other benefits! Toddlers are mobile and get themselves involved in all kinds of germy messes. The feedback your body gets while nursing your toddler will decode any illnesses your child has been exposed to and start creating antibodies to these illnesses before they even start showing symptoms. The immune support to your toddler is really important, since their immune system does not fully mature until around seven or eight years old and is only at about 60% maturity at age one. Breastfeeding also provides natural pain relief, which comes in handy with these clumsy toddlers!
Breastfeeding prevents you from getting pregnant.
Yes and no. If your child is younger than six months old, is exclusively breastfed (is not supplemented and has not started solids), still wakes to nurse at night, and your menstrual cycle has not returned, then you are less likely to get pregnant. This is known as the LAM (lactational amenorrhea method) and it is 98% effective against pregnancy so long as all of the conditions I named are met. As soon as one of those conditions is no longer true for your situation you could ovulate and conceive.
You should not breastfeed if you are sick.
You SHOULD absolutely breastfeed if you are sick! Your milk will be full of all of those good antibodies for your virus and odds are your baby was exposed to whatever you have come down with in the days leading up to the beginning of your symptoms. Nurse, nurse, nurse! Flu, cold, stomach bug, all of it. Your milk will protect baby from catching it or if they do it will not be as severe or last as long.
If you drink alcohol you need to pump and dump.
This is false! There is no need to pump and dump if you have a drink or two. Breastmilk is a blood product so as milk leaves your system it will leave your milk as well. Less than 2% of the alcohol consumed by the nursing parent will reach the milk. The American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding notes: “ingestion of alcoholic beverages should be minimized and limited to an occasional intake but no more than 0.5 g alcohol per kg body weight, which for a 60 kg mother is approximately 2 oz liquor, 8 oz wine, or 2 beers. Nursing should take place 2 hours or longer after the alcohol intake to minimize its concentration in the ingested milk.” The only time you would need to pump is if you are away from your baby and missing a feeding. Even then you can keep that milk, and if you are concerned you can either mix it with milk pumped from a different time to dilute it or use it in a bath.
You should NEVER share a sleep space with your baby if you or a partner in the bed has had any alcohol. The other concern I have with drinking and breastfeeding is the risk of falling asleep. If the alcohol has made you sleepy come up with a plan to make sure you stay awake during a feeding. Have a friend or partner talk with you while you nurse, for example.
Breastfeeding should come naturally.
Breastfeeding is the most unnatural natural thing to do. I was under the assumption that instinct would take over for both baby and I as soon as he was born. I was so wrong. We BOTH had to learn how to breastfeed. I had to learn how to latch him. I had to learn how to hold him to nurse. I had to teach him how to latch with a wide mouth and flanged lips. There was a HUGE learning curve to this that I was so unprepared for. If I can give one piece of advice to expecting parents it is to line your lactation support up BEFORE baby comes. There is a lot you can learn to be as prepared as possible to breastfeed/chestfeed your baby.