Stephanie,
Expanding on the replies of some previous posters, here are my 2 cents
The term ‘breastfeeding jaundice’ really is the answer to the question. There
are 2 parts to that answer. The first is, as a previous poster mentioned, the
way we see things that happen with breastfeeding (like increase in jaundice)
as more abnormal, and compare it to the ‘normalcy’ of bottle feeding.
The second part is that, we are encouraging and promoting breastfeeding, but
we live in a bottle culture, and many of our moms, exacerbated by hospital
practices (i.e. infant sleeping in a cot, the ‘need’ to bathe, weigh and measure
baby within an hour, and the restrictions on cosleeping) are beginning down
the breastfeeding path with a bottle feeding mentality. That is, we want to
breastfeed, but still want to breastfeed in a bottle way – every couple of
hours, and baby sleeps nicely in between. It is still difficult to get around the
bottle culture idea that a baby feeds for a set amount of time, then sleeps for
many hours. I try to tell moms that babies feed 8-12+ times in 24hrs, but if
you do the math on that, that means babies could be feeding almost
constantly, and that is hard for us to cope with since we live in a culture
which has stressed the normalcy of babies sleeping (in a separate location) for
long periods between feedings. This is compounded by hospital practices
which don’t allow for mom to simply put baby between her bare breasts and
leave him/her there for the next 24hrs.
So, the human baby, which should be breastfed frequently and held
constantly, sort of like a baby kangaroo, is being fed and cared for in a bottle
feeding way, fed every few hours, and put in a cot to sleep. This results in
less colostrum getting to the baby and stimulating the passage of meconium,
which results in elevated bilirubin levels, which lead to the term ‘breastfeeding
jaundice’ and cause people to see formula as the savior for the breastfed baby.
In reality, if we treated human babies like human babies, or even like kangaroo
babies, and cared, fed and nurtured them like the immobile, immature
creatures they are – that is, they need to be held, they cannot ambulate over
for their food, and they need to be fed frequently – then we would probably
see the more normal and even healthy levels of jaundice that is normal for
human babies.
So ‘breastfeeding jaundice’ is really ‘bottle culture’ jaundice in my humble
opinion.
Caesy Clubb, RN, IBCLC
West Linn, OR
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