Dear Kathleen,

I certainly understand your frustration.  ......Even though we have good LCs
in our hospital, we still have problems with the staff doing things that
totally sabotage breastfeeding.

A flip-side of another story is:  My boss was talking to us the other day
regarding the fact a pediatrician came to her saying that he was having to
deal with mothers breaking down in his office because the LCs (at our
hospital--probably includes me!) weren't allowing the mothers any choice
when it came to breastfeeding.  In other words, they wanted to combine
bottle-feeding and breastfeeding and were discouraged by the LCs to do
so....This pediatrician also stated that these mothers felt *pressured* by
the Lactation Consultants to exclusively breastfeed and had no desire to do
that.  He told a story of a mother breaking down in his office because she
was *stuck* exclusively breastfeeding.  He also addressed the fact that he
didn't understand the urgency of having a frenulum evaluated by the resident
ENT within the first 24 hours.  (This was also clipped immediately within
that time span.)

This has come up with several pediatricians, I recently talked to a
pediatrician on the phone because the nurse handed the phone over to me.  He
wasn't going to give an order for a consult because he reasoned that the
baby could still suck!  I shared very matter-of-factly that the baby didn't
have good tongue mobility, couldn't bring the tongue down and forward to cup
the breast, the mother already had sore nipples, and wouldn't be able to
transfer much milk or colostrum that way.  He then relented and gave the
order for the consult.

I was sharing this story with my husband about this pediatrician being
reluctant to give the order for the consult.  My husband, (who's a mechanic)
gave this analogy.  "Yes, you can still drive your car with a flat tire,
yes, it will still go down the road for you, yes, it may make the steering
wheel wobble a bit, but it's still drivable!"

He had me laughing over that!

I find that I need to keep a sense of humor, even in the midst of a lot of
head-shaking!

My boss and I also had a discussion about the expectations of mothers giving
birth.  These women are a different breed.  They want a pain-free
childbirth, pain medications afterward, to send their babies to be fed-in
the nursery at night so they can get their rest, give bottles when they
don't feel like breastfeeding, breastfeed only when it's conveinent, pump
and have a good milk supply so they can go out to the mall weekly to buy
tons of outfits and take pictures of their baby each week, and not have to
breastfeed in public, also take a weekend trip away from their baby to spend
time with their husband..................and if they have any problems with
breastfeeding, they expect the Lactation Consultants to *fix* the problem in
one visit.

Anyone else have this experience?

Connie Chiavario, IBCLC  (feeling fed-up too!...... lately.)

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