I never thought so much about these hours before the last few years,  
when women started getting kicked out of the hospital at sixty plus  
hours.  All of a sudden there was much more pressure on those first  
couple of days, and it hasn't benefited mothers, babies or  
breastfeeding.
In the early 1990s, we could let babies set the tempo, feed when they  
were ready, and mothers were relaxed and confident that things would  
sort themselves out.  Now, if the baby isn't feeding at least eight  
times daily with audible swallows after twenty-four hours we are all  
hypernervous and starting to Do Things with them, like feeding  
expressed colostrum to healthy, sleeping, term babies and scaring the  
mothers into thinking they have a baby who doesn't even have the basic  
survival instinct so they will have to express and hand feed them  
indefinitely.  Frankly, it stinks.
Before, we never weighed the babies between birth and about sixty  
hours or more.  Now we weigh them at birth and at discharge and they  
frequently have lost more than ten per cent of their birth weight  
because they are less than two days old.  This is an EXPECTED FINDING  
given what we know about the net balance between intake and output  
even in normal healthy newborns who are feeding on cue.  If we waited  
another day to weigh these babies they would be heavier because that  
is the natural course of normal breastfeeding for most women.  It  
usually takes about three days for intake to exceed output, which is  
when weight begins to rise.  This is what we saw for years and years  
and yet it is as though we have no memory of it to help us cope with  
the New Age of Stinginess in maternity care.
I shudder to think what my life will be like when we are sending women  
home after one day and treating an eight per cent weight loss as  
pathological and requiring intervention in the form of supplemental  
feeds.  I hope I have retired by then.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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