The mothers at your hospital should get down on their knees and be grateful that your hospital is helping them to breastfeed! They don't get this at most of the hospitals where I live, and baby comes home early and not feeding well (34-35 weeks). And parents have NO say so in baby's care around here (or so they report to me). Let me clarify, these babies can bottle feed by swallowing the liquid but they aren't sucking and they don't demand to eat so they are scheduled every three hours. And normally, they get zero breastfeeding help before discharge. But I do think it is reasonable to expect those moms who want to breastfeed to be there for several feedings per day. The baby needs to progress to "normal" feedings. And baby needs to nurse more than one time a day to learn how to breastfeed. I would suggest an explanation rather than a demand to parents. They usually will go along with things when they understand the reasoning behind it. A few of the better hospitals here do a thing at the end of the NICU stay where mom "rooms in" with the baby. It is called "care by parent" sometimes. She does all the feedings/care herself for a few days and then baby is discharged. Kathy Eng, BSW, IBCLC *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html