Right on Linda.  But there are also nurses who use the "too busy"
excuse because they do not know what to do to help the mothers, or
because they don't want to.  These nurses should be somewhere else,
like geriatrics.

At one hospital where I work, we have or had on tape, the report of
one nurse who always uses the "too busy" routine.  Her report?
Something like "Mrs xxx in room xxx decided she did not want to
breastfeed and asked me to help with bottle feeding.  So I went in and
I ...".  And it is obvious she spent many minutes teaching bottle
feeding.  Plenty of time for that, probably because the nurse *knew
what to teach*.  At another hospital, when I complained about bottle
feedings introduced to a baby in postpartum, the chief of pediatrics
wrote back that the nurses said they had to teach the mother bottle
feeding because the mother was going back to work at 2 months!!  But
they never have time for breastfeeding.  And, of course, there is
always time for the bath demonstration, as if you needed to be a
rocket scientist to figure out how to bath a baby.  And always time
for daily weighings (which take up a lot of time), twice daily
temperatures, routine blood sugars on full term healthy newborns
(aaargh!!!) and all sorts of other useless routines.  And, of course,
*routine* admissions to the nursery for "observation" (capital
aaargh!!)  I mean, these are *normal* mothers and babies.

Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC