When a premature infant is born, they are usually not ready to breastfeed immediately after birth. In fact, it may be days, weeks, or months before the baby is ready to breastfeed, depending on how early the infant was born, or the severity of the condition keeping the child in the NICU.
It is important for mothers to begin expressing their breast milk very soon after birth, because this provides the first form of breast millk, colostrum. Colostrum is a nutrient-packed form of breast milk that protects a baby from disease due to a high amount of antibodies in the milk. After three or four days, the colostrum begins to change into normal breast milk.
For a mother, the first two to four weeks are crucial to the process of producing more milk later on. What happens is the hormones in the mother begin to change, evolving to a state that will enable the mother to continue to produce enough milk to feed her baby in the months to come.
Ways to Encourage Breast Milk Production
- Breastfeeding – If an infant is ready, there is no better way to help encourage breast milk production than normal breastfeeding.
- Pumping – Using a breast pump to express milk regularly is also a very good way to ensure milk production stays high while a mother is away from her baby.
- Skin-to-Skin Contact – Even simple skin-to-skin contact, such as kangaroo care, can stimulate a mother to produce breast milk. Some mothers claim that simply hearing a baby cry will cause milk to leak from the breast.
