Breast feeding is meant to be a natural thing, and yet, for some women, particularly new mothers, it doesn?t come naturally.

That is why Lisa Ming-Blyden, a health visitor for the Department of Health, decided to become a certified lactation consultant. A lactation consultant basically gives advice to mothers who are having trouble breast feeding and shows them the proper technique. Many women become frustrated during their baby?s early days of life and give up and switch to a bottle.

?Breast feeding can be more complicated than just sticking the baby on the breast,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?Many women today have not had the experience of observing other women breast feeding. They need some help.?

She said it is critical that women get the help they need within the first three days of having the baby.

?Beyond that the baby starts to get easily frustrated,? she said. ?Breast milk starts to come in around three days so you can get a bit of a mess before they get the right help.?

Ms Ming-Blyden said the most important aspect of successful feeding is baby positioning. Unfortunately, when breast feeding is depicted through the media, the images usually show the baby positioned wrong.

?They put the baby too far up in the crook of the mother?s arm,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?The most common breast feeding problem is poor positioning. There can be a cascade of problems resulting from that including sore nipples and decreased milk supply, among other things. That is all because the baby doesn?t have enough of the breast in its mouth or it is not in the right position.?

She said in today?s world, high expectations can put the new mother under a lot of pressure. ?We now expect the woman to be back to normal right after she has had this baby,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?We expect her to quickly get into shape and get into her former clothing size. There is a focus on expediting things.?

She said in the baby?s early days it may feed frequently, which may alarm uninformed family members.

?There may be pressure from family members,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?They may tell the mother ?something must be wrong if that baby needs to feed so frequently? when in fact, it is perfectly normal. In time things will settle down.?

Since it may take the mother and baby a good three weeks to work out the kinks in their breast feeding relationship, Ms Ming-Blyden doesn?t recommend using a bottle or a pacifier for the first three weeks.

?A lot of it is due to supply and demand being worked out,? she said. ?Some mothers do get anxious about whether the baby is getting enough nourishment. We get women to look at the number of wet diapers and the number of stools within a 24 hour period. By day five you are going to want to have five or six wet diapers at the minimum. You will also look at whether the baby has active periods of being awake and being calm. You want to make sure they don?t appear dehydrated with dry mouth and lips.?

It is also important to look at weight gain, she said. After a baby is first born they may lose five to ten percent of their birth weight before they leave the hospital. ?When it comes to more than ten percent we start to get concerned,? Ms Ming-Blyden said. ?When they get home they should gain an ounce a day during the first few weeks of age.?

However, for some babies and mothers, breast feeding may not be right. Women who have had breast surgery, for example may have difficulty breast feeding. Occasionally, older mothers have trouble producing enough milk. They don?t encourage women with the HIV virus to breast feed. Also, the baby itself can prove a hindrance.

?Sometimes the baby is premature and has trouble feeding, or sometimes the baby can sometimes develop bad habits,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?They might be putting their tongue in an awkward position, or not opening their mouth wide enough. With patience and time that can be turned around. That would be where my role would come in. We do something called suck training.?

However, she cautioned that this can take a little time for mothers. She became interested in breast feeding early in her nursing career. While working at the Salvation Army Grace Maternity Hospital in Vancouver, Canada she was surprised by the staff?s level of commitment towards breast feeding.

?You learn about breast feeding in nursing school but the actual commitment of the staff to breast feeding made me more interested in finding out more about it,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?They really promoted it. This was in 1988. They were actually planning to not have any formula in the hospital, they were that committed.? In 1995, Ms Ming-Blyden and a colleague, Hilda Gray, took an examination given by the International Board of Certified Lactation Examiners and became certified lactation consultants.

Every couple of years Ms Ming-Blyden has to brush up on her credentials to make sure she is up to date on current breast feeding information. One of her concerns is breast feeding and working women. Many breast feeding advocates recommend breast feeding beyond six months of age, but for working women this can prove difficult. Some women are forced to lock the a board room door in an effort to create privacy for themselves, while others try to take the pump into the office bathroom stall. This can cause a lot of extra stress and embarrassment for the mother.

?We definitely need to promote having a suitable environment at work to pump breast milk,? said Ms Ming-Blyden. ?Once they do go back to work, there is no reason a woman can?t keep up her supply of milk and continue to offer milk to the baby that has been pumped. To keep up her supply she has to have two occasions within a full work day to express her milk.?

Ms Ming-Blyden has two daughters Jade, nine, and Hannah, six.

?They were both breast fed,? she said. ?I didn?t have any problems. Often times as a baby goes through rapid periods of growth, it can appear that you are not supplying as much as it needs. The baby is increasing your supply by feeding frequently at periods of time.?

She said some parents may also become anxious because their baby feeds more frequently at certain times than at others.

?Your breast feeding hormones are at their peak at night,? she said. The way the breast feeding and the hormonal part ? over night is when the hormones of breast feeding are at their peak. Women will wake up in the morning and she will be quite full. Those hormone levels will decrease. The baby will be very demanding because of that. It is not because you are starving the baby.?