Just because breastfeeding is natural doesn’t mean it necessarily comes easy. There are a whole host of things your partner is going to have to deal with in terms of how breastfeeding physically affects her body. You won’t be able to shield her from everything as her partner, but it is your job to do what you can to blunt their impact. What are some concrete things you can do to make the sailing smoother for her?
Your breastfeeding partner must nurse regularly.
A little education upfront is essential for you here. If you don’t know what’s physically going on between your partner and your baby, how could you possibly hope to empathize with her when things get tough?
There are obviously any number of considerations you could make here, but for our purposes here let’s talk about the rhythm of feeding. Milk doesn’t just recycle itself if it isn’t expressed – going too long without nursing will lead to your partner’s breasts leaking milk and breast engorgement, which is painful. Waiting too long to nurse will also lead to reduced supply, because your partner’s body will interpret overfull breasts as a sign it’s making too much milk. Breast engorgement can lead to mastitis, inflammation of the breast caused by trapped milk which can progress to a dangerous infection or even sepsis.
All this to say, you need to clear a path for your partner here. Do whatever is needed to get your partner to a place of being able to nurse or pump on the schedule she and your baby need. This is something only your partner can do, and it is all-consuming. She cannot multitask anything else into the mix. That means you’re going to have to fill those gaps by doing some of the things that you are able to do.
Follow her lead – don’t try to be a hero.
You have to listen to, and heed, your partner’s direction when it comes to everything involved in breastfeeding. Read and watch whatever you please – but when it comes to feeding your baby in particular, she will be the expert. Don’t get ahead of her or second guess her.
For instance, you’re not necessarily being a knight in shining armor if you preempt a breastfeeding session by giving your fussy baby a big bottle while your partner is sleeping. Yes, you’ve reset the baby’s rage timer, but when your partner wakes up in twenty minutes to find a bottle-drunk baby with no interest in doing the nursing that desperately needs done, the flash flood of stress hormone into her bloodstream will annihilate the benefits of the extra sleep in a matter of moments, I promise.
So don’t overthink or override here. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to be the hero going forward. This is not one of them. Keep everybody on schedule and do your bit to keep the trains moving. That’s your job here.
It’s going to be hard at times. In addition to sleep interruptions, you’re at points going to have to tell your breastfeeding partner she’ll need to put off first one thing and then another she’d rather do, because otherwise your hungry infant will go from irritated to inconsolable. In those moments, wear your gratitude on your sleeve. She will need it.
Meet her extra calorie needs without judgment.
Breastfeeding mothers will need, on average, a light meal’s worth of extra calories per day versus her prior baseline. You need to do what you can to get additional food in front of her.
You’re not being a butler or a servant – don’t get all macho about this. You’re indirectly feeding and providing for your child, not to mention your partner. That should not violate any of your sensibilities if you’re a reasonable person.
Also, while neither of you should take this season of life as a license to eat garbage, this is not the time to start micromanaging her macronutrients. The season of nursing and pumping is exhausting and irritating and a hundred other things and is not the time to be foisting broccoli florets and celery sticks onto your partner.
Now, if that’s what she wants, awesome. Cater to what her body is telling her to seek out. But don’t make a face if she asks for salty carbs instead (which experience and conversation with others suggests will often be the case). Get her something she can eat one handed and then get out of her way about it.
You can be uber healthy together in a minute – let her feed that baby right now.
Protect her time for hygiene and self-care.
It’s important you protect time for your partner to take care of herself – in particular, in taking a shower every day. In addition to hormonal shifts potentially making her sweat more, she’s going to have a hot baby wallowing on her and making her even more overheated.
And your little bundle of joy is going to be slobbering, snotting, sneezing, and drooling milk and/or formula all over her around the clock – if she’s lucky to not get worse than that.
If your partner isn’t getting at least one shower every 24 hours, she’s going to start feeling grubby, and that’s only going to exacerbate the lows. Life is going to be busy, but it’s not going to be so busy you can’t spot her a shower – and if it is, something else needs to give.
Beyond the mere fact of the shower, it needs to be an opportunity for her to switch off. Make it such that nobody is yelling through the bathroom door at her – unless something is bleeding or on fire, there’s not a lot you can’t manage long enough to give her a moment of peace.
Be gracious considering her lack of sleep.
When your baby needs to nurse every few hours around the clock, there is logistically no way for your partner to get solid sleep. That’s going to take its toll. It’s very important for you to take this into consideration as a partner, because there will be an impact on you.
Your partner may be shorter tempered than usual, may make mistakes she wouldn’t otherwise make, or may have diminished emotional reserve. You need to find a reservoir of grace in the midst of all of it. There’s only so much you can do on so little sleep, so be very kind to this person fighting a very hard battle.
Have helpful empathy for problems with Baby.
There are a hundred issues, large and small, which can crop up between your baby and your partner during breastfeeding. Sore and cracked nipples, issues with your baby’s latch onto your partner’s breast, inefficient milk transfer, and other problems can make an already challenging act truly difficult.
Compounding this problem is the fact that, once there’s any inefficiency in nursing, the clock starts on even more problems. If your baby isn’t emptying your partner’s breasts, it increases the likelihood of engorgement, mastitis, and blocked milk ducts. It also understandably increases your partner’s latent stress level, which exacerbates all of this and creates a rather vicious cycle.
So what’s a dude to do? Well, this is where you need to get both creative and proactive. Don’t do the thing where you say, “You good?” as you’re leaning out the door. Because you know framed this way, 99% of the time she’s going to say yes, and you don’t get a kindergarten-esque “I’M A GOOD HELPER” sticker for having that useless exchange.
This is where you need to do one of the things men have been doing for millennia: Observe, anticipate, and meet your family’s needs. Does your partner use nipple balm after every feed? Then have it staged for her. Does she always grab a granola bar when she sits down to breastfeed? Have it unwrapped and ready to go.
This is highly contextual to your partner, so it’s largely futile giving a litany of examples here, but the goal is to anticipate what your partner is going to be looking and reaching for, and make it so she doesn’t have to expend the effort taking the menial steps to get it done.
And that bit’s the kicker – reducing your partner’s mental load. Having a baby is an overwhelming process for a mother’s mind, and every percentage point you reduce her stress and anxiety about other things opens up that much more bandwidth for her to focus on what’s important.
So how best to do that? Protecting your partner’s mental health, which will be the focus of the next article in this series; you’ll find the link here when it publishes.
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This post was previously published on The Unbothered Father.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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