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Feeding a New Born

Breastfeeding

There are a lot of advocates for Breastfeeding in Germany. You will meet these people at every stage of your pregnancy and after the birth of your child.

Communication and Support

Some of these advocates will push very hard and make you uncomfortable even suffer. However, most of time, they will offer you help by providing alternatives or different techniques to make it easier for you. Please remember to communicate clearly with them.

Apart from the close contact with your baby, breastfeeding of course provides Mother's Milk. On the other hand, there are methods to extract milk from your breast and processes to help your nipples heal.

Nipple Pain

The hospital provided us with a lotion called "HPA Lanolin".

Laser Treatment of Nipples

In some hospitals, for example, St. Elisabeth-Krankenhaus Köln-Hohenlind in Cologne, offer laser treatment for your nipples. This is a very good option if you have sore or cracked nipples.

If you are interested in the technical details of the laser treatment, you can read about it in the following article 1 2,

  1. K. P. Coca, K. O. Marcacine, M. A. Gamba, L. Corrêa, A. C. C. Aranha, and A. C. F. de V. Abrão, “Efficacy of low-level laser therapy in relieving nipple pain in breastfeeding women: A triple-blind, randomized, controlled trial,” Pain Manag. Nurs., vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 281–289, Aug. 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.pmn.2016.05.003. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2016.05.003. [Accessed: May 04, 2025]
  2. H. Chung, T. Dai, S. K. Sharma, Y.-Y. Huang, J. D. Carroll, and M. R. Hamblin, “The nuts and bolts of low-level laser (light) therapy,” Ann. Biomed. Eng., vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 516–533, Feb. 2012, doi: 10.1007/s10439-011-0454-7. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-011-0454-7.

Choose a Good Fabric for Your Clothes/Pajamas

Sometimes the Vienna breastfeeding donut doesn't help and made the nipple pain worse.

But we found some clothes made from some specific fabrics are comfortable for the nipples:

  • Modal textiles.

The following are fabrics that we found is causes irritation to the nipples:

  • Cotton.

Milk Extraction

In Germany, you can get a prescription for a breast pump and the insurance will pay for it.

The one we got from the prescription was the Medela Symphony Milk Pump.

Bottle Feeding

We use the Philips Avent Bottle for bottle feeding.

Washing bottles is a pain. Luckily Baby Brezza Bottle Washer Pro saved us a lot of time and effort.

Formula Milk

We also use formula milk. We have tried several brands and all are fine for our baby. We decided to go with the Neocate Infant because our hospital provided it and our baby liked it. Personally, we don't feel any difference between the three brands.

Formula Easy to Make Price Note
products/aptimil_profortuna_duoadvance_pre Yes. Medium Probably the most popular brand in Germany. Our baby is fine with it.
products/neocate_infant Yes. The milk is very smooth. High. We didn't even know this brand until the hospital told us that they use this one. The formula is very easy to make.
products/hipp_pre_bio_combiotik Liquid Medium Our midwife recommended this.

Supplements

Vitamin D

It is well known that the deficit of Vitamin D in Mother's Milk is highly prevalent 34.

Prescribed with Vitamin D

In Germany, the pediatrician or the hospital will prescribe Vitamin D for your baby.

Research Papers

  1. Cirico MOV, Shimoda GT, Silva IA, Sousa MVP de, Castro R de, McArthur A. Effectiveness of photobiomodulation therapy for nipple pain or nipple trauma in lactating women: A systematic review protocol. International Journal of Evidence-based Healthcare 2021. doi:10.11124/jbisrir-d-19-00371. ↩

  2. Chung H, Dai T, Sharma SK, Huang Y-Y, Carroll JD, Hamblin MR. The nuts and bolts of low-level laser (light) therapy. Annals of Biomedical Engineering 2012. doi:10.1007/s10439-011-0454-7. ↩

  3. Butte NF, Garza C, Lopez-Alarcon MG. Nutrient adequacy of exclusive breastfeeding for the term infant during the first six months of life. World Health Organization: Genève, Switzerland, 2002https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9241562110. ↩

  4. Kimball S, Fuleihan GE-H, Vieth R. Vitamin D: A growing perspective. Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 2008; 45: 339–414. ↩

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