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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