Breastfeeding.
(a) The mother needs to be in a happy mood, as agitation can easily affect the secretion of milk.
(b) Wash your hands, clean your breasts and nipples and massage them before feeding, the main purpose is to help the milk flow.
(3) Take a comfortable position, preferably sitting on a chair with a handle.
(d) The baby should be allowed to hold the nipple and areola while breastfeeding, and the mother can hold the cleft lip gap with her fingers to help sucking. For babies with cleft lip and cleft palate, breastfeeding is often difficult due to the lack of sucking power, so it is more appropriate to use a “special bottle teat for cleft lip and palate” for feeding. If you still want to breastfeed, you can use a breast pump to suck out the breast milk and then fill the bottle for feeding.
Bottle feeding.
(a) Choose a squeezable, plastic bottle that can help babies with poor sucking power to drink milk.
(b) Choose a larger, softer teat. Generally speaking, latex teats are softer than silicone teats. The opening of the pacifier is better in Y or cross shape because when the opening is pressed, the pacifier mouth will open and the baby will not choke easily. Parents can use “bottle nipples for cleft lip and palate” with venting holes and throttles to facilitate feeding.
(3) Control the flow rate of milk to a speed that allows milk to flow drop by drop when the bottle is turned upside down.
(d) Pour a little milk into your wrist to test the temperature before breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding precautions.
(a) The correct position of the pacifier should be towards the side of the lip and upper jaw where there is no cleft, never towards the cleft, so as to avoid abrasion of the nasal diaphragm or nasal mucosa, causing pain and thus affecting the amount of feeding.
(b) When feeding a baby with unilateral or bilateral complete cleft lip and palate, in order to avoid rubbing the cleft palate and to help sucking, the sucking action can be completed with an intra-oral aid, a dental cover, made by the orthodontist.
(c) The baby should be held at 45 degrees or face to face and kept in a comfortable position.
(d) Do not lie down to avoid milk flowing into the nasal cavity or choking.
(e) Your baby can easily swallow a lot of air, so you need to feed him/her in small portions. When you pause in between, pat your back to help burping to avoid spitting up.
(6) After feeding, you can let your baby sleep prone or on the right side, mainly to help digestion and to prevent inadvertent choking when the milk overflows.
(7) After breastfeeding, besides feeding boiled water, you can also use a cotton swab with boiled water to clean the nostrils, palate, tongue and teeth bed to avoid the accumulation of milk scale and oral infection.
(H) When the mucous membrane is damaged, you should ask the doctor to examine and treat the wound so that it can heal as soon as possible and reduce the baby’s discomfort.
(ix) When breastfeeding, milk will flow back from the nose, this is a normal phenomenon, there is no need to be too alarmed, just stop feeding temporarily and continue feeding after the baby coughs or sneezes.
(X) Patting the back: You can put the baby straight on the shoulder or sit straight on the mother’s lap, hold it by the armpit with one hand, fix the head, make the head turn sideways while the body leans forward, and then pat the back to help burp. Each feeding should take no more than half an hour. If it takes longer than that, it means that the baby is trying too hard to suckle and there is still something wrong with the way she is breastfeeding, so you should consult your health care provider and make adjustments.