VideoJug: How To Massage Your Baby For Health And Happiness

Have you tried infant massage? Did it help your baby?

If you enjoyed this video, check out the video category for more!

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

Bonding through Breastfeeding

The show “Young Moms Ask the Experts” focused on parenting questions. It tackled seven main questions and right off the bat the first question touched upon breastfeeding. The mother talked about how she felt disconnected from her daughter from the start. The husband explained, “Angie had difficulty breastfeeding her and that immediately made Angie feel like a bad mother.” Dr. Phil gently questioned the mother.

Dr. Phil: “You had some trouble breastfeeding?”
Angela: “Yes.”
Dr. Phil: “And you had some reactions to that emotionally right?”
Angela: “Yes. She didn’t want to cooperate and I didn’t know what I was doing and so the whole thing was just a ….” [her voice trailed off].

Dr. Phil expressed his belief that Angela had experienced some post-partum depression and said what a shame it was that no one recognized it and stepped in to help. Dr. Sears assured Angela that she was a good mother and that she simply had been “blessed” with a high-need baby.

Angela’s story really struck a chord with me (and not just because we have the same name!) When my first daughter was born, I developed post-partum Graves’ disease (autoimmune hyperthyroidism). I was sick for nearly a year before blood work at a routine annual physical diagnosed my overactive thyroid. I remember thinking: “Is this really what motherhood is? Is it this hard for everyone? Why am I so tired and stressed out and why am I not handling this as well as other mothers seem to be?” Lucky for me the one thing that was going well was breastfeeding. My daughter nursed well and breastfeeding gave me a way to feel that I was doing my best for her. It helped feed and soothe her and our nursing sessions were peaceful and restful.

The Angela on the Dr. Phil show was not so lucky. She felt shame and guilt when she most needed validation and support. I can see why mothers might quickly turn to formula if their efforts at breastfeeding make them feel like a failure. If only more mothers sought help in the early days — I’m talking within the first five days of breastfeeding — right at the start when mother and baby need help learning how to latch, and again a few days later when the mother’s milk comes in and another adjustment period takes place.

Angela needed help re-connecting with her daughter, now age three. The doctors gave her a few key pieces of advice:

1. When your child is having a tantrum, try to see the situation through your child’s eyes and express in words what the child wants. Say, “You really want that, don’t you?” even if you are not willing to give the item in question to the child. It’s enough just to give voice to the feelings and show that you understand what the child feels.

2. Don’t spank, ever. It causes distance between the child and parent and that’s the last thing you need when things are not going well. It doesn’t work and can be particularly disastrous with a strong-willed child.

3. Bond. Spend some one-on-one time reading, playing dolls or snuggling on the couch.

Self-soothing through Hair Pulling

The next question revealed an interesting link to breastfeeding. A 14-month old child had started plucking her own hair out on one side of her head and had developed a large bald spot. The mother had seen several doctors about the problem and had been told several different answers: it’s normal, it’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, it’s abandonment issues. As it turns out, the hair-pulling started when the girl’s pediatrician advised the mother to wean her daughter at 12 months. At the same time, the mother stopped bringing the baby into the parents’ bed at night. Dr. Bob said that it was simply too much to cut off both the breastfeeding and co-sleeping at once and that’s what triggered the behavior. The family needed to work on sleeping arrangements that would help the daughter feel secure, and the mother certainly could start breastfeeding her daughter again (the mother had raised this as an idea) or merely simulate “nursing” her by cuddling her at the mother’s chest.

Crying It Out

Parents of a four-and-a-half-month old baby disagreed about whether the mother should respond to the baby’s cries in the night. The pediatricians assured the mother that she absolutely should listen to her own instincts and respond to her baby’s cries. They talked about the dangers of letting a child “cry it out” including depriving the child’s brain of oxygen and flooding the brain with stress hormones. They recommended co-sleeping, using a co-sleeper next to the bed or at least moving the baby’s bed into the parents’ bedroom (which by the way is the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics to reduce the risk of SIDS for babies younger than six months old).

Co-sleeping is the one issue on which Dr. Phil and the Sears family do not agree. Fortunately Dr. Phil was very respectful of his guest experts and simply acknowledged the difference of opinion. One of the best parts of the discussion was hearing Dr. Phil’s wife Robin say that she never listened to her husband when he said “you’ve got to let that baby cry”! She always listened to her instincts and comforted her children, so she was very glad to hear the Sears family backing her up!

Starting A Baby on Solid Foods

The discussion of when to start a baby on solid foods basically echoed what I said in “Starting Your Baby on Solid Foods: When, What and How.” The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends holding off on starting solids for the first six months. That’s best for allowing the baby’s intestines to develop more fully and to reduce the risk of food allergies. Once the baby starts on solids, the pediatricians suggested avoiding rice cereal (because it’s all carbohydrates) and instead choosing ripe mashed banana or avocado (as several mothers in our poll did).

Colic

I loved hearing Dr. Bill say that “colic” is a five letter word meaning the pediatrician doesn’t know what’s wrong. He said the two main causes of excessive crying are GER (gastroesophageal reflux) and food allergies. He recommended feeding the baby twice as often but half as much at each feeding, and holding the baby upright after a feeding. The other pediatricians noted that if the mother of a colicky baby is breastfeeding, up to half of the cases of excessive crying are attributable to dairy in the mother’s diet. Another culprit could be wheat. (If a breastfeeding mother suspects food allergies as a cause of colic, she should talk to her doctor and consider going on an elimination diet). I’ve gone on an elimination diet before and it’s not easy. If it helps a hurting baby though it’s more than worth it. Never give up trying to find a cause for colic.

The other recommendation for colic was to hold the baby a lot (no surprise there). Martha showed a mother how to do what my friends used to call a “cocktail shaker” hold in which they’d cradle their son on one arm and gently bounce him up and down to the rhythm of a constant beat.

All in all I thought the show was very interesting and informative and not nearly as controversial as I thought it might be. It was great to hear that Dr. Phil plans to have the Sears family back on the show to answer more questions in the future.

Did you watch? What were your thoughts on the show?

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3