Dear all:

Another problem with sugar water (I'd have to dig to find the articles I read) is that it INCREASES the risk of jaundice.  I read the articles on this AFTER I had a delirious night in the hospital when a nurse told me my nipples were perfect for breastfeeding when they had the purple compression stripes and were bleeding.  This was after two days of having to jump down off the hospital bed which was way too high for me to simply slide off -- after my surgical delivery (my son's head was stuck SIDEWAYS and he never descended) and then had to jump back up into bed. I never once had a nurse on the postpartum floor answer the call bell so I just simply jumped up and down out of that hospital bed all by myself.  There were no stepstools. I am five feet tall adn these beds wer NOT made for someone of my height.  The nurses from the birthing center did come up and visit, otherwise I may have jumped down off that bed and out the window I was so frustrated.  

So, any research I read went straight out of my head that second night.  I had miserable nightmares of the malnutrition wards I had visited with dehydrated babies with IVs stuck into their emaciated little arms and their fontenelles sunken into their skulls.  I had this terrible fear that my son was dehydrated because the fontenelle was a little lower when he was sitting up and pulsed up and down.  So, I was convinced that the same nurses that had never responded when I needed to get myself down from the bed or back into the bed were also going to let my son die from dehydration.  So the next time one of them came in I asked for sugar water.  I can now see in all his pictures how I unnecessarily added to my son's jaundice which lasted for weeks afterward.  My son's pediatrician was completely unconcerned even though my son was banana yellow for weeks and I don't remember him ever doing a bilirubin test on my son.  I later had nightmares about a stay pencil or pen being left in our bed or the basinette poking him in the fontenelle.  

Years later when I reread the articles I had forgotten about, that showed the link between sugar water and jaundice, I felt terribly guilty and still do about my moment of delirium. But like all mothers, I have now accumulated enough things to feel guilty about that I can supplant that guilty thought with other guilty thoughts! 

Best regards, 
Susan Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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