Joy Cocks wrote of doing heel sticks with baby in mother's arms and at the breast. I have done this on occasion myself. When I do PKU screens, the mother and baby have been discharged and are returning for a quick once-over including the test. So I can time the stick for when it is least upsetting to the hopefully sated baby who is supported by presence of at least one parent. About 9 of 10 babies I take blood from don't even whimper. Not bragging, just telling it like it is. On the ward, routine tests are done first thing in the morning and it is the lab staff who set the terms: no mothers wanted in the room, all babies to be lined up and ready, warm packs on feet for 10-15 minutes in advance. They are given glucose 30 per cent just prior, on initiative of the staff, who feel very proud that to be making it better for the baby. Before they started with the glucose, the staff never even went in to the room to comfort screaming babies during lab rounds, nor were they conscientious about returning them to their mothers immediately after, nor did they make mothers aware that despite the wishes of the lab staff, it is the baby's right to have a close relative with it at all times in the hospital. Blood samples from adults are taken at the patient's bedside. Babies are herded into a corral together. Babies in some contexts are not really people, it seems. I do think that if the baby is going to be subjected to many heel sticks over a matter of days, it may be worth separating the painful stimulus from the breast, even if only by a few seconds, so that the breast is clearly a source of comfort AFTER the pain. I have observed one child who had tremendous tension around BF despite obviously loving it too, and his parents had been advised to do tendon-stretching exercises for his bilateral club feet when he was latched on and BF, because that was when he was most relaxed. Not for long! Things improved when tendon-stretching was moved to bath time, with the added relaxing effect of warm water. The BF was saved, despite some of the nastiest nipple trauma I have ever seen. Baby was cup fed and wet nursed alternately by three different women for over a week while mother manually expressed. Giving EBM at the breast was not possible due to skin trauma, hence the wet nursing to give him more feeding pleasure. He was grateful for it, too! In fact, he was weaned at age five and a half. (Years, not months.) He was exclusively breast fed, if not exclusively by his own mother, for well over a year, apart from his EBM meals by cup during that short period at age one month. in hopes of a world where people are people regardless of size or verbal skill Rachel in Kristiansand, Norway where the RAIN has now washed away the huge snow we had between Christmas and New Year's *********************************************** 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