>  > >>Hi All , a mother is concerned as she feels something is not quite
>>  >>right... baby is 4 days old.her baby has very sweet
>>  >>breath...
>>



I said

>  > >breastfed babies
>>  >have beautiful smelling breath!  They smell good all over!


Denny said

>
>What ever happened to trusting the mother? SOMETHING is bothering this
>mom, even if she can't pinpoint it completely.


Denny, I would expect whoever is supporting the mother to take her
worries seriously, and to treat her seriously,  but to also be aware
that in the absence of other physical symptoms, one very possible
answer to the worry is that the  baby is very likely to be fine.

New mothers - and this was a very new mother, the baby was just 4
days old - often do interpret perfectly normal phenomena as
worrisome, because they have no benchmarks to compare them to (or if
they have, the benchmarks may be formula-related). This is why
mothers are sometimes surprised and shocked by soft, yellow stools,
or frequent feeds, or night waking.

I am sure we often meet mothers who are sometimes extremely anxious
about something to do with bf, which is normal....but they don't know
it's normal.

Reassuring a mother that bf babies naturally have sweet breath is not
the same as disregarding a mother's worries about possible cardiac
problems.

I would never 'dismiss' a mother's worries, and always urge them to
seek other opinions if they are concerned about their babies, as I am
sure you do.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html