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New mothers find that caring for a new infant can be tiring. All
babies need to get up to feed in the night. Researchers in West
Virginia evaluated the total sleep time, sleep efficiency and
fragmentation, and subjectively reported night awakenings, sleep
quality, and sleepiness/fatigue in 94 postpartum women. Sleep time
and efficiency was measured using a wrist actigraph. They compared
sleep between 2 and 16 weeks postpartum in women who were
breastfeeding, feeding formula or both. They found no difference in
any of the sleep parameters by type of infant feeding
(
Montgomery-Downs, 2010
).
For all new mothers it is all right to limit
visitors until the baby is two or three weeks of age.
If family members are coming to visit they should be encouraged to
provide help that the mother needs.
This may include caring for the
other children, cooking and keeping house.
Fathers play an important role in supporting breastfeeding mothers and
infants. Rempel interviewed fathers of breastfeeding babies in
Canada. These fathers described their role as a team member who
supported the mother in breastfeeding. This support included
encouragement and helping to solve issues that arose with
breastfeeding, helping with cooking and child care, and understanding
the mother's time committment to breastfeeding. Many admitted that
they missed the ability to feed the young baby but since they believed
that breastfeeding was best for their baby, they realized that they
would be able to be more involved with feeding as the infant grew and
started eating foods (
Rempel, 2011
).
All new breastfeeding mothers should have a breast pump available
or know how to do hand expression.
If they are planning to pump regularly,
an electric breast pump may be preferable.
Pumped milk can be saved in the refrigerator or in the freezer and fed
to the baby later.
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