In my last post I mentioned a Mom that I just visited through my VNA work who
elected to continue bottle fdng despite her baby's disturbing issue with the
bottle and her ready milk supply. It occurred to me that because many of you
may have little oppurtunity to explore the possibility of breastfdng with
postpartum bottle fdrs, it might be interesting to share a few recent
experiences.
I visit Moms somewhere between day 3-7 postpartum and *almost* always
approach the bottle fdrs about trying to breastfeed- the majority of them are
at least interested in what I have to say! Very often the babies are
demonstrating some issues with the formula at this point ie. they are very
spitty, irritable etc. or the Mom's milk has come in and either or all of
these creates a perfect segue into my "you can still change your mind" talk!
Besides the earlier described Mom, I have seen 2 other bottle fdrs. in the
last week with interesting scenarios.
Both were multips (4th and 5th children), very educated, upper middle class,
one returning to work, one not. The first is exceedingly thin and was told
when pregnant with her first by her OB not to breastfd because it would be
too "taxing" on her body. She was very interested when I explained to her
that the increased calorie demand was not that great, that she could
certainly  make up for it by carrying nutrient dense snacks in the car(she
drives around a lot-something I can certainly identify with), and that she
could definitely try to mix breast and bottle fdng if that worked better for
her lifestyle. She wasn't aware that any of this was a possibility! She was
open to my offer to assist her with positioning and latch but we were unable
to latch the baby d/t her extreme engorgement. She was wearing 3 bras and an
ace bandage to bind and was in agony! She told me that she was initially
reluctant to have a 4th child because of the pain with engorgement!
The second had a family history (older sibs) of intolerance to cows milk
based formulas and was using isomil. We discussed the current concerns
regarding soy for infants, I directed her to some web sites and encouraged
her to educate herself BEFORE her milk "dried up", she too was engorged , was
very nice and open to hearing  but remained adamant about not breastfeeding.
With these cases in particular, it is very *difficult* to walk the line
between educating and encouraging w/o appearing judgemental and although very
frustrating for me :(, it is a critical component of postpartum family f/u.
Lynn Shea Rn,Bsn,Ibclc
Franklin,Massachusetts

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