alternatives to 100% breastfeeding

Daye wrote:
If you want to know more, please just ask.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I am going to see my midwife
today and I'm going to talk to her about this. They're not BF
specialists in any way, but they support it very much, so I'm assuming
that she'll have a fair amount of knowledge about it. Anyway, if I
still have questions, I'll ask again. :-)

My midwife told me that I still will not be able to use
Imitrex-type migraine abortives while breastfeeding,

According to Dr. Hale, Imitrex is safe to use while bfing. No need to pump and
dump.


Naomi
CAPPA Certified Lactation Educator

(either remove spamblock or change address to to e-mail
reply.)

"Naomi Pardue" wrote
According to Dr. Hale, Imitrex is safe to use while bfing. No need to pump
and
dump.


That's great! Really and truly, I can do without a lot of medications if I
could just use Imitrex for migraines. It works better for me than pain
relievers such as ibuprofen or narcotics. When I can take Imitrex I usually
don't reach for anything else. Pregnancy has been harder, because if it gets
that bad I could only use a low dose narcotic or Tylenol- thankfully though,
I haven't had any migraines. Just a few bad headaches, that get better when
I lie down.

So, if I could at least use Imitrex, I wouldn't feel like I need to try to
go back on any migraine preventives-- my midwife thinks that as long as I am
breastfeeding, my hormones will stay leveled and I won't go back to the way
my migraines were before anyway, until I am no longer breastfeeding.

My other issue is time. I'm simply not heroic enough to breastfeed for
45 minutes out of every hour.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that this is standard routine. Yeah, some
babies nurse that much for brief periods of time (i.e., for a day or two during
growth spurts), but a much more usual pattern would be something like 30
minutes every 2 hours, with one or two longer stretches (say, 4-5 hours), esp.
after the first few weeks.

And remmeber too that breastfeeding isn't 'work', really. You can be sitting
and watching tv, or lying in bed sleeping WHILE you are nursing. I think *I'd*
much rather spend lots of time holding and cuddling my baby than spend lots of
time pumping and washing bottles ... but it's your decision, of course. (Also,
a lot of babies who nurse for long periods of time do so because they like the
comfort of it. If you are not nursing, the baby may still insist on being
held/rocked/cuddled for those long periods of time, so again, you wouldn't
really gain anything by pumping and bottle feeding. (In fact, you'd probably
lose something, since you couldn't hold your fussy baby while pumping, so
you're again, just increasing the time required for baby care. One of the nice
things about bfing is that it is multi-purpose. You feed and comfort your baby
at the same time! (Not to mention getting lots of feet-up relaxation time for
yourself!)


Naomi
CAPPA Certified Lactation Educator

(either remove spamblock or change address to to e-mail
reply.)