Well we all know what that is a croc of!

Oh, the ignorance!

*I’m sitting here nursing my 3 month old who was 9lbs. 3.6ozs. and was back up to birth weight at 3 days old. At her 2 month appt she had gained almost 4 lbs…I GUESS I WASN’T MAKING ENOUGH MILK.

I asked a nurse why my baby was crying so much (she wasn’t crying a lot… I just didn’t understand that I could simply put her to the breast to calm her). Her reply?

“Child, you don’t have enough milk for that big baby! Let’s get her supplemented.”

I was sitting out at the nurses’ station with about three night PP nurses and she poured a teaspoon on formula into my baby’s mouth with a plastic cup. NO ONE SAID ANYTHING or asked what the hell she was doing. I was exhausted and confused.

Fortunately a family member got wind of this and was livid. I had never had any intention of supplementing and she never got more than about three tablespoons.

There are a lot of misconceptions about large babies. I heard countless times with both babies (mostly from older women), “How nice to have such a big baby. She probably doesn’t need to eat very often.” I’m pretty sure a (different) nurse said that to me to in the hospital.

I’m glad I learned that breastfeeding on demand was our miracle fix for everything. It worked for us.

Goodness knows what my 22lb exclusively breastfed 7 month old is surving on then!

My youngest brother was 12lb3oz at birth. My mom was told she shouldn’t bf him either. She did anyway, and he doubled his birth weight by 3 months. Yep, a 24lb 3mo. All on breastmilk. He’s a strapping, tall and muscular 19yo football player now, not an ounce of fat on the kid. I’d say mom sure did make enough milk, and it did him good! As it would do any baby. I know a mom who exclusively nursed twins on one breast alone. She made plenty of milk, too. Surprise, surprise.

Huh… This is another one of those “you can’t win” situations. If your baby is large “Oh you’ll never make enough milk!” (nevermind that my body always produces an oversupply that could easily feed triplets).

I have also heard of cases where the baby was small/low birth weight, and of course the answer was “Oh we MUST get this baby some formula ASAP, because we can’t be certain it will get enough from the breast. We can *measure* how much formula the baby takes…”

Megan:

Well, sure, if your baby is seven pounds exactly you can try it. But it probably won’t work… and you can’t do it if your breasts are small, or if they’re big. Or if you have big nipples, or if your nipples don’t stick out “enough.” Or if your kid is born on the second Tuesday following a new moon during El Nino…

My niece is 17lbs at 2months – and her Dr. is saying that she’s overweight! So they want her mother (who is exclusively breastfeeding) do stop and switch her to formula so that she can “restrict” how much she eats.

My 10.8 lb baby was exclusively breast-fed…and he weighed 16 pounds at 6 weeks of age. Obviously we DO have super milk!

I exclusively breastfed my son who was 10 lbs 6.5 oz at birth. We’re going on a year strong.

The thing is though, shouldn’t nurses work on FACTS and not misconceptions?? These aren’t just random well wishers on the street, these are trained medical professionals who work with babies on a daily basis and have no clue on how they are supposed to be fed or the facts of nutrition. Oh, I mean, other than that info session Goodstart gave…

Thats funny, my 10lb+ baby couldn’t make a dent in my engorgement after my milk came in! THANK GOODNESS for tandem nursing and eager toddlers available to provide some relief, or I would have been in a world of pain.

Liz, I hope the motheris ignoring their idiocy? The terror over fatness is over the top, especially when they start trying to restrict food for infants. Good way to *create* fat people.

All of these horror stories about breastfeeding make me so glad that our hospital is awesome when it comes to getting babies on the boob.

Even with the bili levels my daughter had, they still were supportive of exclusively breastfeeding and my family doctor was too.

I realize now how grateful I should be for that support.

I had a 7.5 pounder and was told the same thing. You really can’t win.

My 9lb 1oz at birth baby spent the first 32 days in the NICU, and I pumped so he would have breast milk. It took 3 weeks after he came home to switch from bottled breastmilk to exclusively nursing. My body is so ridiculously sensitive to tiny changes, however, so it was really hard (even with fenugreek sp? and mother’s milk tea) to eat and drink enough to keep my milk supply up, especially when baby wanted to nurse 24-26 times a day for the first 7 months. I kept at it, but, regardless of what we did, ended up with an average of 1 formula bottle a day (usually around 3 am when I was completely dry). Just because you might be in a situation where you legitimately CAN’T produce enough for your hungry baby (and I know its really rare), doesn’t mean you still can’t breastfeed as much as possible! 24 ‘breasts’ and 1 bottle is a lot better than 24 bottles a day!

My son was 10lbs 7ozs at birth and I have been breastfeeding him since the day he was born, which was 22 months ago!