Nikki,
  ""Starving" babies.....remember that the breast is a source of food,
drink, love, medicine, entertainment, analgesia, and comfort. A newly born
baby needs safety in a new world, maybe some analgesia, some food and drink,
and some medicine (immunoglobulins).
     All a baby can do is ask for the breast. We who are watching interpret
that asking as an assumption that the baby is hungry. Shouldn't we be
educating new mothers that the breast is the source of all goodness for a
baby?
     Isn't it some artifact of three generations of bottle feeding to assume
that "the baby is hungry again" because all the bottle gives is food?
Doesn't
the idea of spacing out feeds come in part from 3 generations of hospital
births and the notion of 2 feeds per shift? Mothers are imprinting on what
they see as well."
   I just had this conversation this AM with one of my favorite nursery
nurses.  Why we assume that these babies who act 'hungry' are 'starving'?  I
hate those words.  I say at least 20 times/day that babies are not
starving...they need to suck, and they need their mother's to suckle at the
breast.  The don't need a pacifier, or a bottle of formula to snuff out
their instinct to suck.  First the baby is too sleepy to suck, then they
begin to wake up, the mother is thrilled because now the baby will suckle
contentedly at that breast, then they become marathon feeders and everyone
thinks they are "starving".  Oh, my gosh!  This image could only have come
from the bottle feeding culture!  I say, where are the images of
breastfeeding behavior? (not here, since we make no money on breastfeeding!)
  We work hard to re-educate, sometimes making headway, many times not
because this cultural image permeates the mind and makes it hard to trust
mother nature.  Some days this job is soooo hard!
                        Betsy Wells-Gephart RN, IBCLC
                        Chandler, AZ




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