Jean posts: "Does anybody have any ideas about how to really get across the
hands-off,
gentle approach when dealing with breastfeeding dyads?"

I don't have an answer to this, but this thread is touching on one of my
personal pet "issues". I suspect the "answer" lies where it always does, in
the slow process of research and education.

OK, we've been talking about what we typically see with babies who have been
handled roughly in early fdgs. We also need to talk about the sad fact that
all too often, the poor mothers of these babies have never been taught what
I am beginning to consider "rule #2": Don't fight with the baby!

From what I see, mothers are very distressed by the "rough" treatment
they've observed on the part of the baby-wranglers at the hospital & in the
drs' office; instinctively, they cringe inside, but since they see the
so-called professionals doing it, and they see all too many nurses, LC's, &
other "helpers" engaging in marathon bouts of "trying" to get the baby on,
they conclude that this must be the way to proceed. As someone recently
said, each session becomes a "do or die" event. They will struggle for hours
at a time with the baby at breast, attempting to get babe to latch & suckle,
till the whole household is exhausted & in tears. Then they repeat it all
again with the next attempt to nurse, and again and again. No wonder mom &
babe BOTH very soon find "breastfeeding" (not!) an unpleasant experience!
Who wouldn't!?

How to fix it? Well, everything everybody has said here on the subject, but
I'd add that *we* need to be the first to break this pattern. *We* need to
treat the mom as lovingly & gently as we would treat the baby; we need to
teach her that it's NOT OK to struggle with the baby at breast. We can teach
her to read her baby's signs of readiness and frustration, the techniques we
use to help babies who may be uncomfortable, and to stop these prolonged
battles. I think that we do that most effectively both by specific teaching
(what is *this baby* telling us? how do we know? how can we help?) and by
modelling the same approach in working with the mother.

"Trying harder" just doesn't work with frustrated, confused, distressed,
hungry newborns - the poor little muffins just got here, & so far they
aren't finding the set-up all to their liking!. It doesn't work much better
with exhausted, frazzled, worried mothers. And until I'd been in this line
of work for a while, it didn't occur to me that parents would need
*explicit* teaching on the subject, that they would need to hear the words
"Don't struggle with your baby at the breast", sometimes over & over again,
from the professionals they look to for help. It's as important as teaching
them to "watch your baby, not the clock" or any of the other things we say
over & over again!

Cathy Bargar RN, IBCLC
Ithaca NY

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html