Dear friends,
Here I am at work on a quiet evening of a 12 hr. shift. This is my
6th night in a row, and I'm trying to catch up on my lactnet posts.
I'm now recovering from pnuemonia and was off work for over a week.
I'm afraid some of my precious lactnet posts were dumped off the
computer since I wasn't here to read them. Well enough rambling,
It's great to be back I've missed you all it's like being away from
friends.
  In July I attended the ILCA conference in Boca and took my best
friend from Cincinnati along as baggage. She is a nurse anesthetist
and gets several weeks of vacation a year. Since her husband only
gets two weeks, we get to do fun in the sun type trips together
because he can't tolerate sun and heat (that flaming red hair). She
was approached by many LC's and asked questions about epidurals and
the effect on babies and BF. At her hospital in Cincinnati she did
more heart, neuro, and intensive type anesthesia and no peds or OB.
But she has now changed jobs and is trying to get proficient in PEDS
and OB. So we are going on a cruise in January called "Spinals and
Epidurals at Sea" and I'm am going as her baggage.
 Many of the questions asked at the ILCA conference concerned dosing,
types of meds combined (cocktails), and side effects. Mary was very
amazed at the concern so many LC's showed about the effects on the babes
and she became very interested in these questions. Now that she is
involved with OB anesthesia she is paying close attention to the
different philosophies of the Dr's and nurses. She told me the one thing
that stood out in her mind was how different dr's dosed. Some think a
mom should be made pain free and need to sleep or rest and give them
a real whopping dose, and others just give enough to help the mom
work through her labor and take the edge off. And then there are those
inbetween.  So we are considering collecting data about epidurals-rates
and dosages and drug combinations, and combine this with anecdotal
observation about the babies and bf during their postpartum stay.
At my hospital we have a high epidural rate and I will try to observe
babes BF and then check the charts about their anesthesia. We hope we
might get an article from this info. So any ideas or tips or help would
be appreciated in forming this venue. I know there are several research
projects in their infancy about epidurals-but this will probably
just be a chart search and observational  information. Thanks for
any help in advance.

marci fodge IBLC, RN at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa USA
pretty much smack dab in the middle of the country, also known as the
midwest.