Being elderly has some advantages in that we can harken back to the  
past...anyone born in the US of A who is over -- oh, about 38 -- was not fed  
anything for the first 24 hours of their lives unless they were lucky enough to  
be born at home where common sense prevailed.  We were "resting the babies' 
 stomach" during that time, and babies were kept in the nursery, given 
nothing to  eat.  Somehow we survived, and some of us (think Bill Gates) even 
have made  gazillions of $$ despite this cruel & unusal punishment.  When my 
Jill  was born, 35 years ago, she was born at 1:30 in the afternoon.  She was 
 finally given water at 1:30 in the morning, and I was finally allowed to  
breastfeed her for the first time at about 5:30 am -- a full 16 hours after 
she  was born.  Despite that, she has managed to become a nurse 
practitioner,  though it was probably her vaginal breech delivery to a primip and not 
being fed  that caused her to have to repeat pharmacology in nursing school, 
much to her  pharmacist father's total dismay.
 
1978 -- daughter Torrey was breastfed in the delivery room.   We had made 
some major strides in four years.
 
But now, instead of seeing that if we keep mothers and babies  together, 
babies will do what they need to do -- instead of realizing that if we  assure 
that babies breastfeed within the first hour or so after birth they will  
receive a bolus of colostrum that will sustain them for quite some time, we 
are  all about "wake the baby and feed it every three hours."  I'm a good  
nursery nurse -- I can bottle feed a newborn rock!  But I can't MAKE a baby  
breastfeed who isn't ready, willing and able.  
 
Why do we have to have a certain number of times a baby MUST feed  in the 
first 24 hours?  Why can't we assess each baby on their own  merits?  Why are 
we so panicked about feeding every three hours?   (Because 8 feeds go into 
24 hours every 3 hours, that's why -- we are good at  math -- we are awful 
at looking at babies as individuals.  Back in the day,  when 6 feeds in 24 
hours were OK, it was every four hours for the same  reason.  What happens if 
we decide 9 feeds is the norm?  What will we  do then?)
 
Why do we go crazy over a 10% weight loss when mom has been pumped  full of 
IV fluids & pitocin (an anti-diuretic) during labor and baby is  overloaded 
with fluids as well as mom, and he's peeing it all out -- but we look  at 
numbers, not the baby?  
 
Dawn, I can't imagine a 10% epidural rate and a 25% C/Section  rate.  Our 
epidural rate is probably around 95% for vaginal deliveries (as  few as there 
are) and we are running a 36% C/Section rate.  So I don't know  what a 
"normal" baby would do since we don't have any.  But how about we  relax over 
the first 24 hours, let our babies recover, keep them S2S w/ mom as  much as 
possible, allow them as much time as they need in the LDR or RR to get  that 
first feed, and stop getting our panties in a wad?
 
OF course, this would require some changes on the part of hospital  
administration/nursing administration/MCH nursing policies.  
 
Yikes.
 
Jan Barger, RN, MA, IBCLC, FILCA
Lactation Education  Consultants
_www.lactationeducation.com_ (http://www.lactationeducation.com/)  

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