Nursing Manners

Do you teach your little ones manners about how to ask for milk and how to nurse? If so, when and how do you teach?

My son is only three months old and we don't need nursing manners yet, but I've seen little ones pull up mum's shirt and try to latch in public and one of my girlfriend's five month old wants to look around and pulls down mum's wrap in the middle of nursing. I don't use a wrap - but I don't want my son to pull up my shirt in public. I'm thinking ahead.:lol:

Hi
Lots of babies are pretty fidgety during feeds, and I don't know that there's much you can do about that. From around 3-4 months they get so distracted during feeds that wraps or other covers over the head can be the only way to feed them, but they will still tend to pull off and try and pull the wrap away so they can see what's going on. It's a phase that can apparently last months - two months and counting here...:rolleyes:
One thing you could try is teaching your little one baby sign, that way they will have a different way of letting you know they're hungry rather than pulling up your shirt, since this is most likely just their way of communicating their needs to mummy :lol:.

Juliette is a squirmy little monkey at the moment, but somehow manages to put her cheek against my boob so she can have a look around, but I'm still covered! I tried the cover thing, but she hated it, dunno maybe she felt closed in or something???

Tallon learnt the baby sign for milk, and he never lifted my top for a feed.

Kayla i think has learnt the milk sign now, but she does occassionally go digging down my top LOL.

Baby signing is great :)

:D Where can I learn how to teach the baby sign for milk? I love that idea. I have been getting into the habit of talking to my son about milk. I don't want him coming up to me saying 'booby booby booby' (not my style). So as we sit down to nurse I ask 'would you like some milk? Yes please? Okay.'

Just in the last couple of feeds my little one has started to get distracted (Daddy doesn't help lol, talking and playing while we're nursing). It's cute!

baby sign lanuage is great .. i taught ds the sign for eat , and he uses it with anyone so they know what he is saying , there are signs for heaps of things and getting started early is the best time , but you can start anytime , i will be teaching dd to ask for boobie , but how do you sign a pair of boobs :lol:

Lea - both hands out front with a squeezing action? PMSL. Think I'd rather have my kid running around asking for booby!

The proper sign for milk is the action of milking a cow LOL. But ours is modified to just opening and closing one hand.

There are plenty of books on baby sign language. It's loosely based on auslan, and simplified.

I think I'll teach DS 'Ky'. The maori word for food.
It's discreet & I'll know what he wants.
My neice & SIL are maori & when my neice sees me feeding him she says to me 'Bubba having his ky hey.'
So I'll just stick to that I think.

The baby sign for breastfeeding is to pat the chest (eg right hand patting the left side of the chest / breast) The sign for milk though is the motions of milking a cow. I know which one I prefer :D but now that DS has weaned he uses the single hand milking sign to indicate he wants a drink of milk.

aah.. none of my books had one specifically for breastfeeding, so we just used milk. By the time he was drinking cows milk he could talk anyway :)

I tended to use that patting chest as my own sign for bib. LOL.

Any recommendations for baby signing books?

I grabbed Tiny Talk at a baby expo a few years ago. There's a few in the book stores. I don't really think it matters which you use, as long as you and bub understand each other :)

Google it, you might get some ideas just off the net for some signs. I'm trying to think of all the signs we used.. please, thankyou, sorry, bird, duck, ball, book, eat, drink, milk, fan, light, dog, cat.. that's probably about it LOL. We got by :)