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Exclusively Expressed Breast Milk
If you were dead set on breastfeeding but your child refuses to feed in that fashion or cannot seem to latch on properly, you probably think that your hopes of giving your child healthy breast milk are over. Fortunately, that is absolutely not true. Many mothers, for various reasons, choose to feed their child breast milk that they have expressed, exclusively.
The benefits to feeding your child breast milk as opposed to formula are many. Breast milk reduces the chance that your baby will develop ear infections, respiratory infections, diabetes, leukemia, allergies and asthma. Breast-fed babies also show a reduced occurrence of sudden infant death syndrome, childhood lymphomas and meningitis.
Although you will be feeding your baby expressed milk as opposed to milk straight from the breast, the two offer basically the same benefits. The only difference comes from the fact that the expressed milk is stored. The storage of breast milk may reduce its immunity components, some of its vitamin levels and some of the fat content. To compensate for this difference, it is best to give your baby freshly expressed milk as often as possible.
As you begin to feed your baby expressed breast milk, there are many challenges that you will face.
• Pumping breast milk is a very time consuming chore. Since a breast pump is not as efficient as removing milk from the breast as a baby is, moms will have to pump more frequently and with more effort in order to supply 100% of the milk that their babies need.
• Breast milk storage. Choosing the right storage container for your breast milk is an important decision. Glass or cloudy plastic bottles are the best choice. These containers provide the best protection for the breast milk. They help the milk keep its fat and vitamin levels high.
• Breast milk reheating. Since breast milk must be refrigerated if it is not used immediately, it must be reheated before it is fed to your baby. This reheating process may cause some vitamins to be lost from the milk. Also microwaves or excessively hot water should never be used to warm breast milk because these heat sources decrease the milk's anti-infective properties.
• Mother-baby bonding may be more difficult. Since you will not be experiencing the close skin-to-skin contact that you would if you were breastfeeding, it is important to make up for this lack of touching in other ways. Make sure that you hold your baby for each feeding. Never prop the bottle up and continue to hold and snuggle with your baby even after he or she can hold his or her own bottle.
After deciding to breast-feed expressed milk, you may decide that you again want to try actual breast-feeding. Some babies will eventually learn to latch on correctly, while others may never master the skill. Even if your baby is never able to breast-feed for nutrition, you may want to snuggle the baby to your breast to recreate the atmosphere of breast-feeding.
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