Dear Friends:
     Breastfeeding helpers end up dealing with all sorts of feeding issues
that really belong in the care of occupational therapists and speech and
language specialists and pediatric neurologists.
     If we are dealing with a baby that can't feed (sometimes the mother
choosing another feeding method besides breastfeeding is a symptom of this)
we are out of our league (generally) at least at this point in our basic
training. A dysfunctional and/or disorganized suck requires much skilled
training. I haven't had it, although all my experience and workshop
attendance and reading have given me an idea.
     Just think about it. What if many mothers that came home from childbirth
in a hospital couldn't walk? Would every postpartum nurse assume the
responsibility for helping moms adjust to not walking or giving them
exercises to help them walk or connecting them with agencies that would find
them walkers and electric wheelchairs? Or would they refer everybody to
physical therapists and neurologists and orthopedic surgeons and wonder
"What's going on that all these mothers can't walk after they give birth?"
     I am in despair about babies that can't do what babies should be able to
do to survive, like suckle. When I suggest to a mother that she take her baby
to a pediatric neurologist, I stay with her to help maintain her milk supply
and to help her get her milk into her baby as its sole source of nutrition
while the professionals that are trained to deal with dysfunctional and
dysorganized sucks diagnose and recommend treatment. I can't take
responsibility helping to resolve  birth injuries.
     Technological birth ( or "la naissance programee" in French) is having
an impact way beyond our profession to handle. We need help. We need
documentation, assessment, diagnoses and treatment plans that are beyond our
scope of practice.
     My prayer is that it will make a difference when all the other
professionals are bombarded with these babies that don't function well after
technologically driven birth. I know that a home birth can result in
problems; it is also true that a technologically driven birth ups the
probability so much that we have to have a support network in place to deal
with it. And the LC is only part of that team!
    Thanks to Linda Smith for inspiring this post. You all know that
together, Linda and I account for at least 60 years of being involved in the
professional care of mothers and babies. We have some idea about what we are
talking about!
     Warmly,

Nikki Lee RN, MSN, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CIMI, CCE, craniosacral therapy
Adjunct faculty, Union Institute and University, Maternal and Child Health:
Lactation Consulting
Supporting the WHO Code and the Mother Friendly Childbirth Initiative

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