Why mom’s quit nursing.

Stop Blaming Nursing Moms: “That’s a dead giveaway. In a culture that truly understands and supports breastfeeding, which ours does not, there is no way that one in four nursing moms would have an inadequate milk supply. That may be true for a small number of unfortunate moms, but the prevalence of �not enough milk� is overestimated in affluent Western cultures.
This happens for two main reasons, both related to a lack of understanding about how breastfeeding works. First, something or someone interferes with the mother�s milk supply. For example, her baby isn�t suckling in the way that stimulates milk production, but no one spots the problem and shows her how to correct it. The other is that she actually has plenty of milk, but believes or is told she doesn’t. This can happen when a baby nurses more often than someone thinks is normal. Frequent nursing is normal in the early days essential, in fact, for establishing milk supply. But many people who give new moms advice including their own mothers (many of whom didn’t breastfeed their babies), husbands and, sadly, some health professionals ” don’t understand that. “

On a personal note, I heard all my life how my own mother could not breastfeed me and my sister because she did not have enough milk and we were “starving to death.” It made me determined from a very early age that I would breast feed and I would succeed at it or die trying! After having my own children and breastfeeding all of them for years, I now firmly believe that my mother was simply given bad advice and that I was not starving, but simply trying to get mom’s milk supply going. I did try to tell her that once, but the look on her face told me that she liked her story better and was going to stick with it. I do hope however that I can give my daughters the confidence to breastfeed their babies successfully.