It is always surprising to me the amount of bad advice new mothers get from their pediatrician regarding breastfeeding. It would seem that if breastfeeding is the best way to feed an infant nutritionally speaking, then a pediatrician would be highly knowledgeable about breastfeeding and yet this is not the case for lots of women.
Truth be told, there is no required breastfeeding class in medical school. In fact, my pediatrician told me that she had one two hour lecture on breastfeeding and of course she dealt with it in her residency. (I won’t tell you where she was educated except to say that it was an Ivy league school–reportedly one of the best medical schools in the country.) She said it wasn’t until she was a mother herself that she learned more about breastfeeding.
There are many problems with having a pediatrician that is not breastfeeding friendly if you want to breastfeed. If things are not going well, this type of pediatrician will be quick to suggest a bottle and/or non-ideal methods of dealing with the issue. Even if things are going well, it could very well be that the pediatrician encourages early weaning.
My first pediatrician encouraged me to get my daughter onto the bottle after three months. Ironically, this particular daughter has serious gag reflex issues and would not go on a bottle, and she ended up being exclusively breastfed until about 13 months. But once the pediatrician started pushing me in a direction I didn’t want to go I knew it was time to find a new doctor.
All this to say, you can and should interview your pediatrician before you ‘sign on’. Here are a few questions to ask your potential pediatrician about breastfeeding to see how ‘baby friendly’ they really are:
1) Do you have an age that you recommend weaning?
2) Does your practice work in conjunction with a lactation consultant?
3) Do you recommend that all mothers feed their babies via the bottle at some point during infancy?
The answers to these three questions will help you determine whether or not you have a breastfeeding friendly pediatrician.