Maria, <I have a professional here in town that thinks because mother's are laboring NPO, with dextrose IV due to epidural and inductions.. hospital policy; that the babies of these mothers are born starving and need formula in addition to colostrum because they have been deprived of nutrition during labor? OK this is out of my league as I am a non-medically trained IBCLC but it sounds way out to me . Any comments?> The situation really has less to do with the mom being NPO during labor than it has to do with IV's running rapidly. Mom's blood sugar gets into a range high enough that the placenta is absorbing glucose from her blood stream perhaps before her own pancreas can deal with it. (Her insulin does not cross the placenta.) The baby is getting a "sugar high" so to speak. This causes the baby's pancreas to put out a lot of insulin to metabolize the sugar into energy/glycogen/fat and keep the baby's blood sugar in the normal range. When the cord is cut, bingo! end of sugar high, but infant pancreas takes a while to adjust, and in the meantime, fetal over-insulin secretion may cause sudden low blood sugar in the baby, which can have potential consequences that scare the pants off of HCP's. In the past, some have erroneously given glucose H2O, which aggravates the situation. Protein is much more stabilizing to the blood sugar, partly because it digests slowly enough not to provoke a sudden blood sugar rise. If colostrum does in fact transfer into the baby early and frequently, this fills the bill. But as we all know: * we can't measure if or how much colostrum is transferring into baby. * hospital routines operate much less stressfully (for the HCP) with quantifiability etc. * A measured amount of formula seen going in allays the anxieties of the HCP in question. So, at least you have a better insight into the comments she makes. It is not a matter of starving, per se. It is a matter of iatrogenic neonatal low blood sugar, that is, a infant's pancreatic reaction to too rapid infusion of maternal glucose load. I can't cite any references off the top of my head, but I used to do maternity staff inservices for all departments many years ago. Hope someone can provide you with references on which you and she can find a common ground to address practice. Jean ********* K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC Dayton, Ohio *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html