Mary asked:

"What do you think of a hospital who "claims" they are supportive of
breastfeeding and yet have a 90% epidural rate? Does anybody know what the
national average is?"

here's what I think. Most hospitals and health care providers do not get the
connection between epidurals and poor feeding. In fact, we LCs, who have known
about it anecdotally for years are just getting some hard data to support our
suspicions. I was at LLL's advanced practiotioner conference last month and Jan
Riordan spoke about her data. This is the first true, hard data that we have
that shows a definitive link between the epidural and decreased ability to feed.
I applaud jan for her hard work in putting this together.

I believe it was stated at the conference that the national epidural rate is
about 60% and clombing. that does not mean that all hospitals have a 60% rate.
What it means is that some rural hospitals do not give epidurals and that
offsets the high rate of intervention in urban hospitals. for an urban hospital,
90% might even be percieved as low!

The problem is not just the docs but also the moms, who have been fed a bill of
goods by such sources as "Baby Story" and truly believe that the epidural is
their god given right. I teach CBE and I'd say 85% of my moms come to me fully
convinced that they won't have to feel pain in labor.

It's a complex issue but....yes, you can have a baby friendly hospital that is
far from mother friendly in its epidural and C/S rates. That's the reality.

Susan Keith-Hergert RN, MS, CPN, IBCLC, CLE, PLA (ALACE)

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