I gave birth a little more than three weeks ago, and my life these past three weeks has been a cycle of nursing, burping, nappy changing, trying to catch what little sleep I can ... and thoroughly enjoying our new baby whom I've fallen so in love with!

Since my primary function in life has been food source to my newborn baby, I thought that I'd spend today's post discussing some of the things I've learned about breastfeeding....


1. The number one solution for sore nipples is teaching baby to latch on properly. I was in tears in the hospital because my nipples hurt so much. When I got home, I immediately logged onto the Internet to review instructions on how to get baby to latch on properly. Once I started training baby to latch on properly, the relief was instant.

2. Sleep when your baby sleeps -- at least once during the day. The advice everyone gives is true! Your nighttime sleep will inevitably be interrupted with a newborn baby, so at least once during the day, take a daytime nap. One or two times, I failed to do this, and it was terrible both for me and baby. I was tired, cranky, and easily upset by baby's crying, which I'm sure affected him negatively as well.

3. Lansinoh (or any other lanolin product for sore nipples) isn't really necessary. At least, it didn't really work for me. Baby hates the taste and actually refused my breast a few times until I'd meticulously wiped all the Lansinoh off (despite the product claim that you don't need to take it off before breastfeeding).

4. Buy a breast pump before you give birth. My manual breast pump was a lifesaver the first week, when my nipples were really sore. When my left nipple was cracked and bleeding, I had baby feed from just my right breast for one afternoon and simply pumped from my left breast. The hospital where I gave birth gave us feeding cups for baby, so the milk I expressed didn't go to waste: I got to feed it to baby later on in the day.

5. Drink a lot. Because producing all that milk can leave you feeling dehydrated. One good piece of advice I got was to try to drink every time baby nurses.