Susan:
Re:" I believe this 6 hour thing is based in some older ILCA
> reccomendations. The new standards allow for twenty four hours. I agree
> that in many cases you might get away with 48 hours, however, in
> re-writing our policy we are going with 24 hours so as to be consistent
> with ILCA's reccomendations.">
> Susan
>

Thanks for the info.  I can understand why ILCA is saying 24 hours with
early discharge, but I still think 48 hrs in cases where moms are being
followed CLOSELY (as in daily or more frequently) once they are discharged.
Certainly for a hospital policy it makes sense to have this down on paper as
24 hours.  Even for this, I would still say that with moms who are wanting
to work more with skin to skin we need allowances.  I've seen policies
turned into completely inflexible straight jackets.  The other thing that
happens is that pumps are handed over and that is the end of the staff
working to achieve anything.

Above all, we need to make sure moms and families are educated.  It is still
not standard policy here in our hospital (I'm not hospital based) to
educated about early signs of dehydration.  It's pretty much hit or miss,
and I make sure to repeatedly go over this with all families.  Cardinal rule
in all of this: watch your baby carefully.
Chris Hafner-Eaton, PhD, MPH, CHES, IBCLC    [log in to unmask]
mom, wife, educator, lactation consultant, researcher, author, organic
gardener, photographer, lapidary creator, lousy cleaner.

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