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Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
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Fri, 25 Oct 2002 07:59:58 +0200
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I'd like to remind the list that most of this discussion is about what babies
do in hospitals the first few days, or what they do after being born in a
hospital, and there is a predominance of subscribers from N. America, so most
of you have as your reference point, what babies are like after being born in
N. American, esp. U.S., hospitals.  This is not an insignificant fact.

I don't know that any hospitals resemble 'home' more than they resemble other
hospitals, and that is one survey I won't be carrying out, though if someone
wanted to do it I'd gladly read their results.

Michel Odent (again!) found that home-born babies who were in constant contact
with their mothers, did not lose weight at all after birth, but began gaining
right away.  According to Uvnas-Moberg's writing about how oxytocin works
together with prolactin to promote anabolism (growth), this makes good sense,
and it should probably be making us wonder how we could get our hospitals to
foster such outpourings of endogenous oxytocin as well.  IMO it would benefit
mothers and babies, during birth and after.

I have seen plenty of babies who aren't really that eager before the second or
third day, some longer.  But I have seen plenty who come out, latch within the
first hour or two, and stay there.  Nobody can convince me that their total
intake the first two days is under 100 ml.  Some of them are having yellowish,
curdy stools before 36 hours, have passed meconium in abundance, and still
have not lost weight.  Babies in the first category arouse concern because
they aren't hungry enough, and we waste all kinds of time and effort trying to
force them to act hungry, or at least to eat.  Babies in the latter category
do fine at home, but in hospital they often end up getting supplements because
they are so unusual that both staff and mothers identify them as abnormally
hungry, and assume they can't be satisfied at the breast.

Fish can't see the water.  The environment makes a huge difference.  Until you
have seen something different, you have difficulty imagining how pervasive the
environmental effects are.  Simply having big clocks on the walls of all the
rooms matters, a lot.

Rachel Myr, midwife, IBCLC and oxytocin fan
Kristiansand, Norway

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