With a sinking feeling in my stomach I heard this lead-in to one of the stories on my evening TV news today - actually they said' "Many" babies get so little nourishment that they are starving' as they showed a perfectly happy and normal looking mother breastfeeding a newborn.  I stayed calm, did not smash the TV set, and watched the piece.
For once it was WELL DONE, considering.  They showed the same mother and baby and said 'Jane and her baby are doing fine with breastfeeding, but a new study by a pediatrician at XX hospital shows that mothers are being discharged earlier and earlier, before they have learned to breastfeed well enough.'  They interviewed one of the midwife administrators who said that the focus in maternity care has always been on birth, and post partum care is typically neglected because it is less glamorous, and we need to make sure there is adequate staffing on all the wards and that follow-up is at a safe level when so-called early discharge is instituted.  Early discharge at this hospital means 2.7 days post partum!!  The midwife also said that longer stays are not necessarily the answer, as long as there is follow up available.  Yea.
I don't think they mentioned any numbers, nor did they play up the fact that this study was done only at the hospital in question, where they have repeatedly slashed services to support breastfeeding, but on text TV I learned that 7 babies PER YEAR have been readmitted for dehydration in 2008 and 2009.  The hospital cares for 5000 mothers each year.  If you think 7 out of 5000 is 'many' then the story is accurate.  'Many' in my book would be an admission per week, not every other month.  There are no babies being admitted anywhere else and we can safely assume that absolutely every baby in their catchment area in this kind of trouble, will be discovered and admitted for care at this unit as there are no other peds units anywhere near it.  

Still, it was a nice change from the breastfeeding-bashing stories we were getting a few months ago, and the conclusion was that if babies are discharged in the first couple of days, it is imperative that there be planned followup including a weight check within a couple of days thereafter.  If done at the hospital there is a good chance the person doing the weighing might know how to interpret the data too.  

Rachel Myr, Kristiansand, Norway - home of Norway's first postnatal clinic for follow up after early discharge, in operation since 1993, and ready to pose for any journalist who wants to do a piece on how to get postnatal followup right :-)

             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome