When Your Pediatrician Gets It Wrong: Breastfeeding Advice You Shouldn’t Follow

Very common for new moms to trust their pediatricians implicitly, and this can start breastfeeding out in a bit of a less than optimal way. If the advice you're getting is. Crappy advice. So we are gonna go into some of the common bad advice that I see new moms get and what you can do, if you are unsure about the advice you're getting from your pediatrician.

This is the place for you to get the real support and information you deserve. So grab a drink, get comfy, and let's get into it. So let's talk about why so many new moms are getting bad advice from their pediatrician. Why is this happening? Short answer is pediatricians are not breastfeeding experts.

Most of the time. If you're lucky, you may come across a pediatrician who is also a board certified lactation consultant like myself, but most of them are pediatricians. They're trained in a lot of different areas, which makes it difficult for them to have been trained in breastfeeding, in addition to all the other stuff that they know.

And a lot of times this advice can be really, I. Disruptive. So let's talk about the top five bad pediatrician takes and better reframes so that you can be sure the advice you're getting is useful. So number one thing that I hear so frequently, you need to space out baby's feeds. So baby learns to eat more at once.

So breastfeeding is not meant to be scheduled, like bottle feedings. Spacing feedings with breastfeeding can actually cause a lot of issues because we're overriding what baby is telling us. If baby's eating frequently, there's a reason for that. Either babies needs a lot of calories or they're cluster feeding, and they're helping our bodies get the signals that we need to make more milk.

So if your pediatrician is telling you that you need to space out your feeds. Do your own research and decide if that feels like it resonates with you. I'm by no means saying any of this advice is advice that you shouldn't follow. Rather, I'm just providing context on why it might not be the most supportive advice for your breastfeeding goals.

What you should do instead, in most cases, rather than spacing out feeds on a schedule, is to follow baby's cues frequent. Shorter feeds are fine. What we really wanna be focused on is that baby is gaining weight and that their output as in poops and pees. On track if those things are happening. You can feed your baby at whatever interval works for you and baby.

And so there's no one size fits all answer, but broadly suggesting to all new moms that they should space out feeding so that babies get used to eating more at once isn't supportive of baby's natural instincts. It isn't supportive. of our supply in most cases.

Number two is one that gets a lot of heat in the breastfeeding and pediatrician world, and that is your baby's weight is low. So we need to start supplementing with formula. Those can be the most horrible words to hear from your doctor when you're a new mom who is hoping to breastfeed. So let's get into why this is not something we should take at face value.

The number one thing I see. Not considered. When it comes to weight loss, it's prolonged fluid exposure during labor. That means if your labor was longer than six to eight plus hours and you were attached to fluids the entire time, that means your baby had exposure to fluids during that time as well.

What we can see happen is babies come out, they weigh a certain amount, and then they lose the water weight that they gain from the fluid exposure during your labor. Then we start to panic because we're seeing, you know, nine, 10, 11% weight loss, and that looks really scary. So I want to always caution you that if you're being pushed formula for weight loss concerns, let's think about what happened during labor, what happened afterward, and go from there.

If your baby's lost 6% with their body weight, that's within the realm of normal. Obviously we do have different considerations, so that's not a blanket statement. It's not something that you can just take and apply to your situation because there could be other considerations, that you guys have going on, and it's always super important to get personalized advice when it comes to your feeding journey.

So if you're being told to supplement formula without figuring out why baby has lost weight. Your doctor's giving you bad advice. If it's something related to fluid exposure, we definitely wanna keep that in mind when making our decisions about introducing formula to supplement for weight loss or not.

If your goal is to breastfeed exclusively and you're being told to supplement formula, please remember that there are always options for getting that extra calories into your baby. That can be less disruptive to your goals of breastfeeding than using a bottle. We can do things like cup feeding, syringe feeding,

you can use like a little feeding tube, attach to your finger and do some finger feeding, so you always have options, so don't feel like you're stuck. The third piece of advice I get is kind of twofold. It's either if breastfeeding hurts, just tough it out, it'll get better. Or it's the opposite. If breastfeeding hurts, just stop breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding pain is common. I don't think as many of us running practices would be so busy if breastfeeding pain wasn't as common as it is. So if you're being told that you need to tough it out or give up, that's not true.

You need to work with a lactation professional who can dig in on a why you're feeling pain and help you find solutions so that you can have comfortable breastfeeding. Breastfeeding should be comfy. It should be enjoyable. It should not suck. It should not be painful. So number four. This piece of advice really irks me as someone who, when I had my first child, I was a teenager, I went back to school.

So this type of of advice can be really problematic. It's when you go to talk to your doctor and you're saying, I'm returning to work, and they're like, if you're returning to work, you have to stop breastfeeding. Yeah. Obviously super problematic.

It is completely possible to maintain your supply and feed baby, express breast milk while returning to work. With planning and support, like working with a lactation consultant, you can make sure that you have a good schedule for pumping. You understand how to so the milk, and you have a good schedule for feeding baby the pumped milk while they're at daycare or with the family.

So completely possible. Do not let that piece of bad advice hang you up.

So the final piece of bad advice that we're going to talk about is. A doctor telling you that you don't have enough milk and your supply is low because your baby wants to eat frequently. This obviously ties back into the first one of that.

That is not true. Working with a lactation professional who understands normal infant feeding patterns can help you feel confident that your baby is eating enough and help you feel comfortable with following babies. Feeding cues rather than feeling like you have to have them on a strict schedule.

You're not crazy if you leave your pediatrician appointment feeling confused. I do a lot of, rehabilitation of mom's confidence after pediatrician check-ins because they get a lot of bad advice and it can be bad advice related to breastfeeding in the early days. But that bad advice can carry over throughout your entire breastfeeding journey if you don't have a pediatrician who is supportive of breastfeeding.

You are the boss of your journey, and you don't have to listen to anyone. If you get advice and you feel like it's bad advice, like it's not resonating with you. Feel free to throw it out. If you get advice that you're like, I don't know about that advice, feel free to do more research and see if you can get clarity about if that advice resonates with you or not.

That's why it's so important to not just defacto listen to pediatricians because their advice might not be advice that's. Grounded. In fact, when it comes to breastfeeding, again, this episode is not remotely to be rude or dismissive of pediatricians and the great work that they do. It's simply to make you aware that they are not the boss of your breastfeeding journey.

You are. If you get advice that doesn't resonate with you, do more research and make decisions that make you feel confident and empowered.

That's it for today, mama. If this episode helped, don't stop here. Get even more support@thelatchlink.com. Need one-on-one help? Did you know your insurance covers free lactation care? If you have Aetna Anthem, Cigna, blue Cross Blue Shield, or UHC, you can get free virtual lactation care. Right from the comfort of your home.

Until next time, trust yourself, trust your baby, and know you are doing an amazing job.