/Rachel, I am gobsmacked that this sort of situation is rife in a 
country as modern thinking as Norway! Do these mothers have NO rights in 
the way they wish to feed their newborns? Can a Pedi really rule against 
their wishes??? I find this very distressing for all concerned!

Eva Hoebee
Australia
/
On 10/11/2015 9:05 PM, Rachel Myr wrote:
> Well, Jacquie, do I ever feel your pain.
>
> For some reason all the pediatricians working in Norwegian hospitals have
> got it into their heads that formula supplementation is the answer to every
> problem, especially imaginary problems like 'diet-controlled gestational
> diabetes' (can someone please explain that one to me?). This is a new
> development, starting in mid-2014.
>
> Cold baby? Heel stick and supplement just to be on the safe side. Baby
> under 2700 grams at birth? Supplement within half an hour of birth and oh,
> wait to check blood sugar until an hour later (no joke, that is our new
> procedure and anyone who disregards it is liable to be reprimanded). Baby
> over 4500 grams at birth? Check blood sugar within an hour and give a
> little formula just in case. Baby between 35 weeks and 37 weeks gestation
> at birth? Formula feed within first hour, check blood sugar three to six
> times in first 24 hours and supplement with 10 ml of formula three-hourly
> for the first TWO TO THREE DAYS. Mother had gestational diabetes, with our
> without need for insulin? Give 10 ml formula within twenty minutes of birth
> and wait one hour to check blood sugar. No choice, no alternatives, baby
> must be given formula or the employee's head is on the chopping block.  The
> pedis are against checking blood sugar before giving formula out of concern
> for the pain involved. There is no concern for what is happening to
> breastfeeding, or to babies' guts, or to the attachment process as mothers
> and babies are disturbed for the sake of weighing a baby immediately after
> birth in order to determine whether they are outside the magic limits of
> 2700-4500 grams. It makes me SICK.
>
> Baby's temp 2 hr after birth 36 degrees C or less? Check blood sugar and
> feed formula if pedi says to, regardless of the blood sugar level.
> Pediatrician are more ofteh in the room during the birth, not a normal
> scenario but one which is becoming distressingly commonplace in my hospital
> as we manufacture diagnoses to stick onto pregnant women so their risk
> category goes from normal to high and we can monitor them more intensively
> and disturb them more completely while they try their best to just have
> their babies. If the pedi thinks the birth looked 'hard' the baby is likely
> to be separated from mother for 'observation' and supplemented as of course
> its blood sugar will be lower than if it were left where it belonged.
>
> Mothers are given no choice, no advance info on what is going to happen to
> their baby and the breastfeeding if they fall into any of these risk
> categories, despite most of them being known before the baby is born.
>
> I've been working in this field since pre-Baby-Friendly days when
> rooming-in was not the norm and skin-to-skin had never been mentioned. It
> was easier back then to help a mother to exclusively breastfeed from birth
> because the doctors largely ignored everything that happened after the
> five-minute Apgar score. I am not joking, things are bad and getting worse.
> About 40% of babies on my ward have now received formula before they go
> home and most of those get it before they even get to lick their mother's
> breast. Meanwhile, we laugh condescendingly at 'immigrants' who request
> formula because 'I don't have milk in my breasts yet.' We don't laugh at
> pediatricians who don't think there is milk in breasts, we jump when they
> say jump and we sabotage breastfeeding every hour of every day.
>
> The pedis are using a home-made procedure book from the hospital in Tromsø.
> All the info on infant feeding in it comes from conference proceedings of
> the European Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology and the words 'breast
> milk' or 'lactation' do not occur in the entire document. Yet this trumps
> the skills and knowledge we in maternity care have used to keep babies
> healthier than anywhere else in the world for decades. Go figure.
>
> Rachel Myr
> Kristiansand, Norway
>
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