Breastfeeding

About breastfeeding

Breast milk is natural and provides nutrition and protection for your baby, helping your baby to grow and develop. Your breast milk is unique to you and is constantly changing to meet all your baby’s particular needs.

Women who have breastfed are at lower risk of:

• breast cancer
• ovarian cancer
• hip fractures

Babies who are breastfed are less likely to get:

• gastro-intestinal infections
• respiratory infections
• necrotising enterocolitis
• urinary tract infections
• ear infections
• insulin-dependant diabetes mellitus
• sudden infant death syndrome
• childhood leukaemia
• cardiovascular disease in later life
• ear infections

Breast feeding is a skill that both you and your baby need to learn. This can sometimes take a little time to perfect. The key to effective breast feeding is ensuring effective positioning and attachment of baby at the breast. Have a look at your Off to a Good Start booklet and speak to your midwife/health visitor or infant feeding support worker who can all support you.

We recommend that you breast feed your baby responsively which means you respond to your baby’s feeding cues, as well as your own desire to feed baby. Feeding responsively recognises that feeds are not just for nutrition, but also for love, comfort and reassurance between you and your baby. Remember you cannot spoil a baby by breastfeeding.

Sometimes if your baby is experiencing a problem you may be asked to feed at certain periods but this should be for a short time only. Problems which may require this type of feeding plans would be if your baby had a weight loss or if they needed to go on the hypoglycaemia plan following birth. If your baby is in the neonatal unit it is common for babies to require to have feeds at regular intervals but again this should be for short periods only.

Breast milk storage

If you wish to express breast milk then you need to ensure that you store it correctly. The length of time you can store breast milk is dependent on the temperature of your fridge or freezer. Up-to-date breast milk storage guidance for breast milk and bottle hygiene can be found at:

• Breast milk storage and bottle hygiene from Parent Club
• Expressing and storing breastmilk (pdf) from The Breastfeeding Network

Vitamin D when breastfeeding

If you are breastfeeding, you will receive a free bottle of vitamin D prior to discharge from hospital. You will then receive more for the duration of your breastfeeding journey from your health visitor or family nurse.

If your baby is being breastfed your baby will also receive free vitamin D drops. One drop should be given to your baby per day for the duration of your breastfeeding up until their 1st birthday. Further vitamin D drops will be given to you from your health visitor or family nurse.

If you have any problems sourcing vitamin D:

email hirs.mailbox@nhs.scot

More breastfeeding resources

UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative

• Positioning and attachment video 
  
• Mother's breastfeeding checklist (pdf)
• Breastfeeding resources

Parent Club

• Breastfeeding