Early on in my pregnancy, when my doula asked me whether I was planning to breastfeed, I was baffled by this question. Being raised in Russia, I did not understand what was being asked. I am having a baby, the baby needs to be nourished, that’s what the breasts are for, hence – yes, of course I would be breastfeeding.

After reading more literature regarding postpartum, I realized that in North America formula is for some reason considered a viable alternative to breastfeeding (and not just an emergency measure), and breast- versus formula-feeding is a hot political topic. Leaving out …

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The issue of alcohol consumption while breastfeeding is one of the most debatable ones and it is hard to find reliable information on it. However, I was able to dig out the following:

There is a rough calculator of the length of time that alcohol will be present in breast milk, depending on the number of drinks and the mother’s body weight. As a general guideline, it takes as long for alcohol to clear the milk as it does for the blood alcohol level to subside. Alcohol taken with food takes longer to clear out of the system. …

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The first issue I had to face was that my baby was born with a tongue-tie. This is a (often genetic) condition where the frenulum (the little piece of skin attaching the tongue to the bottom of the mouth) is too short and does not allow the baby to fully stick the tongue out. In severe cases, the tongue looks upside-down-heart-shaped and can prevent the person from being able to perform motions many of us take for granted, such as licking an ice-cream cone. In moderate and severe cases, the tongue-tie can interfere with breastfeeding by impeding the latch, and …

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He turned the stiff pages in horrified fascination. They opened into another world, a world of quite stupefying problems… It was amazing, he decided after reading a few pages, that a swamp dragon ever survived to see a second sunrise. Even walking across a room must be reckoned a biological triumph… They lived on a chemical knife-edge the whole time. One misplaced hiccup and they were geography… Omnivores or not, what they must really live on was their nerves, flapping apologetically through the world in mortal fear of their own digestive system. [Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!”]

Below are a few …

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