I remember feeling like I had a baby permanently attached to my boob for the first three months after giving birth and for much of the time for the nine months that followed. I enjoyed very much gazing at my precious newborn for hours but with so many hours a day with a baby on the breast, at some point restlessness set in. Never one to sit still, I became the master of multitasking. By managing to do something in addition to nourishing my growing baby, l felt stimulated and more productive.
Below are the my five favorite things to do while breastfeeding (after gazing lovingly at my precious newborn for a good long while, of course).
1. Read. Time to read seems like a luxury when you have a baby. Take the opportunity to read parenting books, celebrity gossip magazines, or anything else you might fancy.
2. Manage Lists. I am a list-maker, a list-lover, a believer in the power of lists to organize thoughts, intentions and time. I love to make grocery lists, to do lists, shopping lists for clothes and school supplies for my older children, business idea lists, and lists for about anything else you can imagine. It’s incredible what comes to mind while you are sitting calmly for several minutes and your body is releasing the hormones that provoke relaxation and the strong sense of bonding and love.
3. Catch up on emails. With a new baby, it can be difficult to find time to stay caught up on communications. Using a positioning pillow, once baby is latched on you will have both hands free to crank out several emails in a feeding session.
4. Catch up with a friend. Every new mother thinks of and dreams of calling her best friend from college, her aunt in Colorado, or her grandma to talk about the new journey of motherhood. But who has time for that? The nursing mommy does! With the hormones already flowing, it’s a great time to bond with friends and relatives over the phone. They will appreciate it as much as you do. A few minutes of actual voice conversation is worth a thousand emails.
5. Exercise. You may think you have to be stationary to breastfeed, but I can tell you from experience that you can feed your baby while on the move. If you have a sling-type carrier, you can probably walk around the block with baby on the boob. At the very least you can practice some wide leg squats or other standing exercises with baby in arms or a carrier. While developing an exercise program to do with my baby, I discovered by circumstance that there were several exercises I could continue to do while breast-feeding so that my workout wasn’t interrupted by a feeding session. See the video here. It’s fun and feels good to move while breastfeeding.
How did you juggle multitasking while breastfeeding?
Please note: The Bump and the materials and information it contains are not intended to, and do not constitute, medical or other health advice or diagnosis and should not be used as such. You should always consult with a qualified physician or health professional about your specific circumstances.
