Top 10 Qualities of a Breastfeeding-Friendly Birth Team
Breastfeeding is a natural process but it doesn’t always come naturally. Many things are known to help boost breastfeeding success, such as seeing another mom breastfeed, taking a breastfeeding class, and the support of your spouse or partner. Statistically, one of the most powerful strategies is to labor and birth with a minimal amount of interventions whenever possible, in part because baby’s breastfeeding reflexes are naturally stimulated by the normal birth process. It's also not uncommon for routine interventions to lead to even more interventions, such as an unplanned epidural to cope with the sharper contractions of a Pitocin induction. The collective consequences of birth interventions can bring major disruptions to breastfeeding from such effects as the repercussions of medication, increased pain from instrument deliveries or surgery, and separation of baby from mother.
So one of the most powerful ways to protect your breastfeeding success is to seek out a breast-feeding friendly birth team - providers who are skilled and enthusiastic about low intervention/low-tech birth. Their expertise in natural birth will help both of you emerge from birth empowered, feeling your best, and without needing a lot of extra recovery from being ‘done to’, all of which protects your and baby’s connections, and their ability and instincts to breastfeed skillfully.
As you get to know your potential midwife or obstetrical care providers, check in with them on these priorities which would help you and your baby have the smoothest breastfeeding beginning and journey:
1. Focus on empowerment and education
Care providers who specialize in normal birth don’t have to be cajoled into ‘letting’ you birth with less routine interventions, they are passionate about educating families on the benefits of minimal interventions and support for your breastfeeding journey. Look for providers who:
Welcome and encourage questions
Demonstrate their commitment to informed consent by volunteering lots of balanced information
Trust and respect parent’s decisions about their care and their baby’s
Help mothers navigate hospital routines that might disrupt their breastfeeding goals.
2. Encourage natural comfort measures
The integration of low-tech support techniques in labor such as hydrotherapy (using showers & tubs) for pain, no restrictions on movement in labor, supporting mom in birthing in her position of choice, and the hands-on support of doulas have been documented to result in:
Fewer requests for pain medication
Less interventions such as instrument deliveries (vacuum extraction, forceps)
Reduced tearing at birth
50% fewer cesarean surgical births
Quicker recoveries
Better Apgar scores at birth for baby, meaning a healthier and more medically stable newborn
Improved breastfeeding outcomes - more women start breastfeeding and continue for longer
3. Promotion of gentle birth practices to protect mother and baby
By actively encouraging natural birthing (not just ‘allowing’ it), using low-tech approaches to labor and birth first, and carefully avoiding the overuse of routine technology or invasive procedures, your birth team
Substantially reduces your risk of unnecessary medication, the use of instruments being needed to help get your baby out, and surgical birth
This naturally results in less of the additional problems that commonly follow those - less pain, fever (some birth medications have fever as a side effect), antibiotic use, jaundice, separation, and other related complications; all which are known to result in higher rates of difficulties with latching and nursing
By embracing gentle, low-tech approaches wherever possible, there are less disruptions and greater protection of your baby’s reflexes and the biological sequencing that help them know how to feed.
4. Commitment to minimizing the routine use of birth medications
The less medications used, the more awake and vigorous your baby will be right after birth which safeguards their normal breastfeeding behavior. While medications such as Pitocin and epidurals are sometimes welcomed and/or necessary, they do cross the placenta to the baby and negatively affect their reflexes, alertness, sucking and motivation to nurse. While babies are drugged, they are more likely to:
Have a weaker suck
Be less alert
Less engaged in bonding
Less able to focus on learning their new task of nursing.
When your birth team emphasizes non-pharmaceutical ways to protect or enhance your labor whenever possible, they are also protecting your baby’s nursing reflexes and instinctual motivation at the breast, minimizing your risk of being separated from your baby at birth due to complications.
5. Help baby get close and stay close with skin-to-skin contact
Your first hour together is called ‘The Golden Hour’ because of the incredibly positive benefits for both of you – this physical contact
Boosts the release of the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin, which helps you
Reduce postpartum bleeding
Increase bonding with your baby
Bring in milk faster;
And for your baby, helps them to
Maintain their temperature
Regulate their breathing and heart rate
Be eager to bond and connect
Have a vigorous instinctive drive to nurse.
The Golden Hour begins when you and your baby get together after birth, so while it’s ideal to be protective of this early window and not let hospital routines casually disturb it, don’t despair if needed medical care takes priority. Bonding is not lost to you, and whenever you both are ready and able, take the time to ‘have a fresh start’, and slow down for some skin-to-skin time and getting to know each other.
6. Honor the Baby’s Natural Feeding Instincts
Respecting the first ‘Golden Hour’ goes beyond physically keeping mother-baby together, it means also protecting them from disruption to prioritize their connection
It’s essential to delay non-essential interruptions or medical assessments that could interfere with the newborn’s crucial reflex sequencing and first feeding efforts.
When I am midwifing home births where we don’t have any external time protocols, parents are usually opting to cut the cord and do the newborn exam (including measurements and weighing the baby) after 1-2 hours. Routine checks of baby’s heart rate and breathing in the meantime are gently and easily completed without disturbing the baby on their mama.
7. Provide gentle, respectful handling
Both mothers and babies are able to relax and smoothly begin their breastfeeding relationship when their care is respectful and sensitive, and avoids
Unnecessary suctioning
Overly loud and bright immediate postpartum environment
Casually handling mother and baby in a jarring manner
Interruptions based on routine rather than individual need
Overzealous procedures, such as rough and protracted abdominal massage on every mother regardless of her level of necessity.
8. Advocate for keeping moms and babies together 24/7
When care providers work to prevent unnecessary separation, and ideally are willing to support safe bed-sharing* if desired, this
Reduces stress for mother-babies
Encourages feeding on demand
Keeps baby warmer and more stable
Builds mothers’ confidence
Helps mothers and babies learn each other’s cues
All which lead to better immediate breastfeeding, as well as longer and more successful breastfeeding with less problems overall.
*See my breastfeeding course, Navigating Breastfeeding for safe sleep resources, or my upcoming Navigating Birth course for an detailed discussion of this hot topic.
9. Limit unnecessary supplementation and use of artificial nipples
Breast-feeding friendly birth teams strongly discourage bottles, supplementation of any kind, and pacifiers unless genuinely medically necessary, especially in the first few days and weeks. They advocate for early and frequent breastfeeding to help moms establish a good milk supply, and proceed thoughtfully with any interventions to help prevent oral aversions or nipple confusion.
10. Help connect moms to resources
Knowing where to turn for support when it’s needed helps diffuse issues before they turn into crises. It’s incredibly helpful when your birth team helps you transition to comfortable breastfeeding by offering additional resources to support your journey, whether it’s their office’s lending library, the phone number of a recommended lactation consultant, or a list of community resources that host breastfeeding support groups.
I know that if you’ve been looking for such highly informed care, you may have found it challenging to find such ‘ideal’ providers or facilities.
And of course things can come up under the best of circumstances - birth journeys always require our flexibility and adaptability! But by understanding what helps you and your baby best begin your breastfeeding relationship, your ability to skillfully navigate your birth and assist your baby’s efforts grows. And luckily, missing out on these ideals is NOT a ‘deal-breaker’. If interventions become a part of your birth story as they sometimes do, it just helps to understand there may be a need for your increased patience in the beginning of breastfeeding, or for a bit of help to get through a bumpy or slower beginning.
If needed to optimize your birth and breastfeeding priorities, consider changing birth locations or providers, hiring a doula, becoming more informed through natural birth and breastfeeding education, insisting that your birth plan be honored, and/or advocating intensely for yourself and your baby.
It’s a powerful beginning to do all you can to protect your normal birth; having a breast-feeding friendly birth team that utilizes low tech approaches pays off well into the future. The resulting satisfying breastfeeding relationship brings a cascade of happy, healthy benefits for mother and baby both over months and years. Happy Breastfeeding!