Many of us have heard, read or even received (in my case not me, but my wife) the recommendation to mark fixed schedules in the feeding of babies and children.
"Children should have a few hours to eat," "drink milk every three hours" or "if you do not get to the next dose, give water" are still too common misconceptions.
In the same way that adults do not have timetables for eating (physiologically, because the obligations of working days mark them), babies should not have them either.
We always eat when we are hungry and stop doing it when we are gone. Sometimes we will need to have a snack, because we will be hungry and other times we will have eaten so much that we will not eat again until dinner.
Well, babies work in the same way and that is why today, whenever breastfeeding recommendations are given, a commandment prevails: Breastfeeding should be on demand.
Some recommendations long ago said that babies should breastfeed every three hours and for ten minutes. This made many children go hungry when the shots were spaced so much and they were dissatisfied receiving milk for only ten minutes, when many needed more time to finish the shot.
Why was the three hour rule eliminated?
Or maybe I should say “why the three hour rule should be eliminated,” because unfortunately breastfeeding is still recommended every three hours in many hospitals and health centers.
For a time most babies were (were) fed artificial milk. This milk is more difficult to digest and this makes it remain in the stomach of babies for practically three hours (sometimes less, sometimes more).
Many people (including many healthcare professionals) argue that they cannot offer food to a baby if they still have food in their stomachs, that is, they cannot be given milk if they have not finished digestion by a supposed risk of impasse.
This false belief It comes from the need to control the intakes in very premature babies. Many of them are not able to digest the food that is offered to them by tube and this makes it necessary to wait until they have digested it completely and assess if there is anything left in the stomach before offering more quantity.
However, full-term babies (and many premature babies) are able to digest without problems just like an adult does: food enters and is digested. Adults can eat on an empty stomach and we can eat on a full stomach. Babies, of course, can do the same.
In fact, when we take the first scoop to the stomach, it is no longer empty and yet we continue eating. It is as if, after eating the first dish, we were denied the second because we have to digest the first.
If a baby, after 10 minutes of having breastfed, returns to ask for breastfeeding, he may have been hungry, he may have suckled a little and did not want more, but now he has realized that he does want more, he may have come want to look at the ceiling and now he wants to take his chest again, maybe ...
Although someone tells us: "But how will he be hungry, if he has just suckled!", We must think that, if he asks again, it is that he had not finished.
Similarly, if instead of 10 minutes an hour passes we will be in them. If you request food it is a sign that you need it.
Breast milk, unlike artificial milk, is digested more easily and stays in the stomach for less time.
Telling a mother to wait three hours to feed a child who is breastfeeding is to leave him without eating when he needs it (because he will ask before three hours) and mortgage the milk production, which depends on the amount of suction of the baby.
Curiously, many children who are fed with schedules end up taking mixed breastfeeding, because as those who have recommended the schedules say “your milk does not feed him,” “he is running out of hunger” and “it will be that you have little milk”.
It is not a problem that the milk feeds or not (the breast milk of every woman is of unquestionable quality unless it is malnourished), but certainly he is getting hungry because the mother is giving him every three hours and not when the baby needs it.
The only ones who really know how much they need and how hungry they are are the babies, that's why they are left with control.
In a few days we continue with this topic to understand a little more why we should not follow a fixed schedule to breastfeed and why we should not limit the shots to ten minutes in each breast.
Photos | Flickr (Raphael Goetter), Flickr (timtom.ch)
