Babies need only be breast-fed three times a day for the first day or two following birth. A normal, healthy baby may only awaken that number of times during a twenty-four-hour period. A baby should never be disturbed from his sleep to nurse.
By about the fifth day after birth to the second week baby should feed at about four-hour intervals during the day. A good schedule is at six a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m. Never feed baby at night. Nighttime is a time for sleep, not for the burden of digestion and elimination. It may be difficult at first to not nurse at night as baby might awaken, but once you get a routine established baby will follow it.
Shelton recommends merely turning your baby from one side to the other if he cries. If this does not work, perhaps walking baby will help.
Most mothers, especially new mothers, have a tendency to overfeed. They seem to think that whenever baby cries, he is hungry. In fact, some women dislike their baby's crying so much that they get into the habit of pushing the breast into baby's mouth every time he cries. This can be detrimental to baby. Overfeeding, such as this, inhibits function and retards growth and development.
Shelton recommends that following the second week after birth baby be cut back to three feedings a day. Of course, with this amount of feedings your baby will not be the fat little butterball that is considered so healthy in this society. But he will be much healthier and will develop and mature more quickly. He will develop good eating habits later in life as a result. In fact, most bad eating habits begin during infancy.
How long should baby nurse during each feeding? That depends entirely upon the flow of milk from the breast. Sometimes the baby will be thoroughly satisfied after only five minutes on each breast—sometimes it may take ten to fifteen minutes. Watch baby to see if he seems satisfied.
Besides creating fat, slowly-developed babies with bad eating habits, overfeeding causes baby to suffer from indigestion, gas, intestinal colic, diarrhea or constipation, stuffy noses, skin rashes. Overfeeding causes a frequency of urination and bowel action so that the mother is constantly changing diapers. Even at night when baby (and mother) should be sleeping, he is busy emptying his bladder and bowels.
Another common problem among infants is hiccoughs. Hiccoughs are the evidence of undigested residue. Their purpose is to eject the overload.
Most babies have regular hiccoughs and mother usually just stuffs more in—either water or sugar or both. Hiccoughs are also a result of overfeeding.
Other common complaints are drooling and spitting up so that baby can be seen wearing a bib as regularly as he would a diaper. Teething can be a painful ordeal if baby is overfed. A baby who is fed only what he needs and when he needs it does not have this problem.
Most doctors will say that baby should gain about a half a pound of weight per week for the first several months. This is an incredible amount and it is only fat that will eventually have to be lost as fat is merely toxins.
Most midwives or alternative doctors will recommend nursing your baby upon demand. But this also is not good advice as baby does not always know what amount is best for him. He needs to be trained in good eating habits— they don't necessarily come naturally. Shelton says, "In all nature there is not another, example among mammalian species where the female permits her young to feed upon demand., All of them exercise control over the nursing of their offspring...."
Oftentimes the cries of pain a baby, lets out because of intestinal distress from overfeeding are mistaken for cries of hunger and baby is fed more. The breast becomes like a pacifier and baby equates it with security. Most of these overfed babies will sleep off these feedings like a drunk sleeps off his binge. Their lives become a round of eating, vomiting, sleeping. Most people consider this a normal infant's life though.
After all the abuse an infant receives in infancy by overfeeding, his digestive organs may never function normally. He may have dyspepsia later in life and will be more susceptible to disease.
The three-feedings-a-day plan, although it may seem cruel to some of you, is definitely adequate. Many Hygienists have proven this with their own children. Their children grow faster and develop better.
They sleep better at night and give their parents less anxiety and require less attention as they're rarely complaining or sick.
The newborn possesses the power and ability to digest and assimilate, easily and continuously, only the amount of food necessary to produce normal growth. And you'll know that when you see it.
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