At the hospital which I just began working at, the patients may have their
babies finger fed while an inpatient, but if that baby is not awake and
nursing well by the time of discharge, the parents must choose breast or
bottle. It seems that in the past, when finger feeding was taught to the
parents, many of the peds saw terrible cases of "addicted" babies to finger
feeds. Many of these babies were dehydrated or gaining far too slowly.
Therefor, the hospital policy is to NOT teach the parents how to finger feed.
Only hospital staff may fingerfeed, and it is BREAST or BOTTLE or BOTH at
discharge.

Therefor....I have a lot of work to do in following these women up
postpartum!

Do any of you other hospital LCs have a policy such as this for similar
reasons?

Thanks,
Brenda Phipps, BS, IBCLC

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