Breast Pain Three to Five Days Postpartum
At this time of breastfeeding, any breast pain you may experience probably means your breasts are engorged from your milk having just come in. This is quite painful at first, but normally improves within a couple of days. The best thing you can do is put your baby to the breast as much as possible to help remove the milk from your breasts. While you are engorged, you can apply warm compresses before you feed your baby. After you have finished feeding your baby, you can apply cold compresses. The cool brings wonderful temporary relief. If the condition persists, contact your pediatrician or a lactation consultant.

Sore Nipples
Experiencing sore nipples, especially when the baby latches on, is very common the first couple of weeks. Make sure your baby is latched on properly. He should not be “nursing” your nipple like he would the bottle of a nipple. He should have taken the breast fully in his mouth and his lips should be flanged out. If you experience blisters, cracking or bleeding, contact your pediatrician or a lactation consultant.

Hard Areola
Before breastfeeding, use moist heat compresses to soften the areola. If the areola is still too hard for the baby to latch onto, try hand-expressing some milk to soften the area.

Plugged Milk Ducts
Plugged milk ducts feel like a pebble or pea under the skin or areola. They are best treated with hot compresses, breast massage during feeding, and pumping after feeding. If possible, place the baby’s chin toward the plug. Massage from behind the plug towards the nipple and pump for ten minutes after each nursing until resolved. Make sure you are not wearing a bra that is too tight or that has an underwire pushing into your milk ducts. If the condition persists, contact your pediatrician or a lactation consultant.

Growth Spurts
Growth spurts with reference to breastfeeding are periods of growth preceded by the growing baby’s increased demand to nurse. These usually occur sometime between three and six weeks and three and six months of age. It will take your body a couple of days for your supply to catch up with your baby’s demand for more milk. This can be a “trying” time. Put your baby to the breast as much as you can. As tempting as it may be, try to resist the urge to give your baby supplemental bottles as this will undermine the unique “supply and demand” principle of your body.

Introducing Baby to Bottle
If you are able to exclusively breastfeed your baby the first four weeks, this will help to establish a great milk supply. When you introduce the bottle, use slow flow nipples. In some cases, bottle feeding a breastfed baby is more successful when someone other than the mom feeds the baby. Sometimes the transition is smoother when mom isn’t in the room.

Introducing Baby to Solids
In most cases, solids should not be started until at least six months of age. Waiting until this age greatly reduces the incidence of allergies. Developmental phases should also be taken into consideration. The baby should not only have doubled her birth weight, but should be sitting alone without support. One sign of readiness is her grasping at parent’s plate or food. When you start solids, always breastfeed before giving the solids to ensure a healthy milk supply along with a healthy appetite for the breastmilk.

Weight Gain
On average, babies gain four to seven ounces a week. They can lose up to 10% of their birth weight in the first several days, but by two weeks of age, most babies gain their birth weight back.

Mothers’ Diet
There is no list of foods that nursing mothers’ should or should not eat. Some babies, however, are more sensitive to certain gassy foods, especially in the early weeks or months. If you are experiencing a gassy baby, look for a correlation between when the baby is gassy and what you have eaten within the past 24 hours. Green, leafy vegetables, broccoli, tomatoes or sauce, citrus juices or fruit can sometimes cause gas. If you cut out these foods temporarily, the baby should feel relief in the next 24 hours if that food was the culprit. If the problem is dairy products, you won’t find relief for ten to fourteen days.