>  She said that a Rochester study showed that there was no difference in
>infant feeding if the mother received an epidural.  This was a blind study
>with 200 patients.  All infants were scored every day while in hospital.
 She
>admitted she was startled at the results and mentioned that the study did
not
>look at length of  the epidural nor if multiple doses were given.  When the
>researchers went back to look at these, they did not have enough numbers to
>examine it.

Another very important component to this issue is what mix of drugs were
used. A while back, a lactnetter posted that she had worked at a couple
of hospitals where epidurals were routinely performed; in one, she saw
lots of suck problems, while in the other, she saw much fewer. She
attributed the difference to the different narcotic mixes of the
anesthesiologists.

-Lisa Marasco, BA, IBCLC