Dear Lactnetters,

I might be a little behind the times here, about a week ago somone
posted a question about latch-on problems in women giving birth in
hospitals. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but I have
an interesting study on latch-on problems. I went to the LLL Illinois
Conference last weekend and took a session by Betty Crase, Director of
the Center for Breastfeeding Information LLLI. It was all about the
latest, greatest breastfeeding studies within the last two years. On
the 1996 Facts about Breastfeeding sheet is a study about epidurals and
latch-on problems. I'm not quite sure if this is what you are looking
for, but here goes.

Crowell, M.K. et.al. Relationship between obstetric analgesia and time
of effective breastfeeding. J. Nurse Midwife 1995; 39(3): 150-56.
Infants who received analgesia within an hour of birth, or no
analgesia, and who initiated breastfeeding early, established effective
feeding significantly earlier than infants with longer duration of
analgesia and later initiation of breastfeeding.

Now, what Betty told us was that the infants of the mothers who
received epidurals early in their labors took over 17 hours longer to
latch-on correctly than those who received no drugs. And I think she
also said that babies who were separated from their mothers right away
took an average of just over 11 hours longer to latch-on than infants
who nursed right away. That last part I am unsure of though because my
daughter was trying to get "num-nums" at the particular moment and I
was having trouble hearing. This might be worth looking into though.

Tricia Palleja, LLL
(Mommy to Beth a 19 month old "best"-fed baby)