Laura asks: Is there anything in the literature that points to
drugs or interventions that increase the incidence of low blood sugar in
newborn at 1-2 hrs of age?
But why test these babies anyway?
All the up to date work done on hypoglycaemia shows there is a wide range
of sugar levels in healthy term babies. It doesn't seem to matter one
little bit.
Babies in some of the less bf-friendly UK hospitals are still tested far
too often for hypoglycaemia, but I have not heard of anywhere that bothers
to test so soon after birth.
This sounds to me like a territorial issue - it's paediatricians in search
of something to do, and somewhere to do it. Could it possibly be that some
medics don't care for the idea that healthy babies might not need their
expertise...so they go looking for something that could be 'wrong'...?
Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne