Zena Gresham wrote: <<I am a little surprised that you ask this, Chris. . .
I absolutely believe that it is not only "safe" to teach, but "needs" to be
taught to help keep them safe!>>
Hey, Zena, I'm glad my question caught your eye! In my heart I agree with
your position, that teaching all moms to hold their babies skin to skin
would benefit everyone. I'm just looking for assurance that there is no
"down side" to making this recommendation. Primum non nocere, and all that.
So please tell us more about what has happened since you began teaching STS
in every WIC breastfeeding class. I am especially curious to know whether
women are able to practice STS in your local hospitals. What do the moms
tell you when they come back to WIC with their new babies? Did they hold
their babies STS right after birth? Did they continue during the hospital
stay? Do they do it now at home? Have they had any problems with it?
doubting relatives? skeptical nurses and doctors? jealous partners?
flashbacks for moms who have been abused?
I tell people about STS in my WIC prenatal classes too, but I worry that I
am setting them up to hit yet another barrier when they get to the hospital.
I suspect that STS may be "allowed" in our hospitals for middle class,
well-informed parents who are willing to be assertive, but I would bet that
it is not the standard of care in any of our hospitals in the region. So
that is really what I would like to change!
Next month I will be doing a brief update on breastfeeding at the end of an
all-day session on maternity and newborn care that our hospital consortium
presents every year for MCH nurses in my region. With only 30 minutes at the
end of a long day, I want something provocative that will get their
attention, so I have decided to focus in on STS as a low-cost, low-tech,
universally accessible intervention that is powerfully beneficial for
solving breastfeeding problems in the early days.
I hope that this talk can plant the seed for STS in the dozen or so
hospitals in our region. I would love to hear from anyone who has been part
of changing the attitude of health care practitioners in her/his area. What
did you do to stimulate the change? What barriers did you encounter and how
did you address them? I need some success stories for my talk next month, so
please tell me what has worked for you.
My sister told me the other day about a "new" technique that her husband is
using. He is a psychiatric social worker who takes care of kids with major
abuse issues. He just gets the parent to hold the child. Margaret says it
can be really difficult to get the parent to do it, especially the dads, but
Claude sees a major positive change in kids' behavior once their parents
begin holding them. This sounds like corroboration for the idea of having
everybody hold their babies in the most effective way, which is STS.
I hope we can have a good Lactnet discussion about changing minds on STS.
How about outside the US? Is STS an accepted part of newborn care for
full-term healthy babies in countries where midwives manage most of the
births? Do you have any "lessons learned" to share with us?
Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA
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