Grandparents are enormously important to the new family. Your support is invaluable. As parents and now grandparents, you have seen fashions in infant rearing come and go, particularly in the area of infant feeding. The last 20 years has seen a great deal of research into breastfeeding and breast milk, giving us valuable information about the benefits to be gained and the best ways to establish successful breastfeeding.
Consequently, more parents are choosing to breastfeed their babies. Feeding practices have changed dramatically from when you were rearing your children, so we would like to take this opportunity to offer some suggestions as to how you can best support your children to parent their new baby.
- buy a breastfeeding book - this will give you up to date information about breastfeeding which is based on current research.
- Attend a breastfeeding ante natal class with your daughter/ daughter in law
- If possible, perhaps offer to help your daughter/daughter in law with household duties or other children, to enable time for a successful breastfeeding relationship to be developed. When breastfeeding is established you may wish to offer babysitting for an occasional night out or afternoon coffee with friends. Your new grandchild can be fed expressed milk by cup or bottle
-Offer words of encouragement, praise and reassurance
- Share some of your feelings about what being a grandparent means to you
-Provide practical support in the form of preparing meals, doing the ironing, or taking baby for a walk in the pram while the new mum catches up on some sleep.
