Does your toddler want to breastfeed a thousand times a day?!
Many of us are not aware that babies cry for two reasons, - to indicate immediate needs like hunger, discomfort, etc AND to release pent up stress and emotion from their bodies.
Does your toddler constantly ask to breastfeed? Does your baby wake up in the night more often than they once did, wanting milk? Do you ever find yourself feeling frustrated or touched out? Do you ever wonder why your child seems to need milk more often as they are getting bigger?
Many of us are not aware that babies cry for two reasons, - to indicate immediate needs like hunger, discomfort, etc AND to release pent up stress and emotion from their bodies.
Why does this matter?
When we misinterpret our babies attempts to release pent up stress through crying, believing they have an immediate need to feed, we are not offering them the opportunity to release these feelings and, without meaning to, we are teaching them to suppress their feelings through food rather than expressing them. This can lead to babies requesting to be fed every time they feel painful feelings as opposed to when they have a need for nourishment.
As you read this information I want to invite you to check in with yourself and see if it resonates with and feels true to you. If it doesn’t, I invite you to stop reading and move on. If it does and you haven't been aware of this until now, I want to invite you to offer yourself a lot of compassion and to let you know that it is never too late to shift the way you relate to your child’s emotions.
Babies come into the world knowing exactly how to release stress from their bodies through crying, however these attempts to release stress are often misinterpreted as immediate needs requiring an action. So with the best of intentions, parents usually respond to this attempted emotional expression and release by trying to meet what they believe is an immediate need, and feed or rock, bounce, shh or find other ways to 'settle' their baby.
When babies are repeatedly fed when thy are not hungry but are crying to release stress, they learn (usually by the time they are 6 months old) that the way to respond to the sensations that they feel in their bodies when they are experiencing painful feelings is through being fed.
Again I invite you to be really compassionate with yourself as you take this in. It is never too late to support our children (and ourselves) to reconnect with and release these feelings.
From an Aware Parenting Perspective, there are 3 ways to distinguish your baby's hunger from a need to express their feelings:
Time since they last fed - remember that as our babies get older their tummies grow so you can gradually increase the amount of time between feeds (probably to a lot longer than you may have thought!)
The way they ask - a signal for hunger in infants doesn’t begin as a big cry but as a smaller sort of grunting sound, and only escalates as the hunger builds. A sudden intense cry is extremely unlikely to indicate hunger.
Their behaviour when feeding - a hungry baby will suck continuously and most babies will empty both breasts, and then come off the breast feeling relaxed. A baby who is not hungry or who has feelings might suck intermittently, fall asleep after just a little, pinch, bite or make agitated body movements.
My daughter had learned to disconnect from her painful feelings through breastfeeding and when she was 9 months old I really focused on distinguishing the difference between when she was hungry and when she had feelings to express.
The first few times I said a loving no when she asked to feed but wasn’t hungry she had really really big feelings. I interpreted this as her feeling rage for my saying no to something she was used to using for comfort, as well as all the feelings that lay beneath because of this.
Within a few months of deeply discerning between my daughter's hunger and need to release feelings, we had found a mutually nourishing breastfeeding relationship. While breastfeeding she was calm, free from agitation in her body and there was always lots of lovely eye contact between us. These feeds were much more spaced apart than I had ever imagined possible, and would take about 15-20 minutes, during which I felt grounded and deeply connected to her.
I acknowledge that this might be very different from your current experience and I'm sending so much love to any thoughts that might be arising as you read this. I want to remind you that it is never too late to support your child to return to their innate wisdom of emotional expression.
If what I'm sharing resonates with you and you would like support to navigate your own breastfeeding relationship, I would so love to hear from you, connect with me here.
