The ultimate guide to breastfeeding: Expert answers to every new mother's question

Before I started working on this explainer, I asked a question to many mothers via WhatsApp: How was your breastfeeding journey? The responses came in immediately. Voice notes, long paragraphs, others terse.

Reading the replies, I realised that breastfeeding isn’t simply an instinct that falls into place. In fact, it is one of the steepest learning curves of parenthood. For many parents, every feed brings moments of uncertainty, sometimes pain, and countless questions that they type into search engines at 2am.

So, I gathered the questions and posed them to two experts: Mili Wanjiru Karina, a nurse midwife and international board-certified lactation consultant, and Janet Ntwiga, a nutrition specialist with UNICEF Kenya.

1. What should a mother do in the first hour after birth, and why does it matter?

Wanjiru: Immediately after birth, the mother should initiate breastfeeding or start skin-to-skin contact with her baby. That means placing her baby on her chest, skin to skin, so that the baby has the ability to latch onto the breast if they wish, or simply be close to their mum. This keeps the baby calm, warms their body temperature, and regulates their blood sugar and breathing.

For the mother, latching the baby to the breast helps initiate lactation. The body gets the message that it’s time to start producing milk. Even though breast milk has been present in the mother's breasts since around 16 weeks of pregnancy, this begins the active process of lactation.

Also read: Every drop counts: The back-breaking labour of breastfeeding premature babies

What's amazing is that the baby can actually do this on their own. Iit’s called the breast crawl. They just need to be placed on the mother's abdomen, and they will use their legs and knees to crawl up to the breast.