Sure enough, I wasn't clear in my last post about SNS tube placement.  In a
football hold with baby looking straight up at mom, traditional placement
has the tubing running down from the top of her breast.  The placement I now
like has it running up from below her breast - 180 degrees from where it
usually is.  Plopping the breast into the mouth also plops the tube in.  If
the tube is on top of the breast, plopping the breast in tends to flip the
tube up and away.  (Yes, I know, the baby is brought to the breast, not
breast to baby.  But there's also, for many of us, a sort of plopping motion
involved.)

Since the tubing is the weak link in positioning (it's not supposed to be
there, it's flimsy and flips around, it's not an integral part of the
breast) it makes sense to me to get it in first, not last.  I've seen
mothers trying to fish it in first with traditional positioning, but that
means they're messing with the baby's upper lip, landing that on the breast
first rather than landing the lower jaw first.  And if they have it go in
last, they may end up with a well-positioned baby and the tubing curved back
around and out of the mouth.

But as I say, I don't use tubing very much.  Jack Newman, you use lots of
feeding tubes.  What are your pros and cons of each position?

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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