Coach Smith here again, disagreeing with Andrew.
Suctioning of vomitus, mucus, or whatever CAN and does cause breastfeeding
problems because ANY artificial oral experience, especially a noxious
stimulus like suctioning, that occurs prior to the first breastfeed can
disrupt normal suck responses and easily causes infant oral aversion.
Righard and Widstrom have reported on this repeatedly. Here's what happens
after suctioning:
Scene 1: Baby won't open wide (or at all), mom thinks baby is rejecting her,
quits BF. She can force-feed a bottle, but not a breast.
Scene 2A: Baby won't open wide, latches onto the nipple tip, which causes
poor milk transfer and nipple damage, result baby stays hungry (is not
satisfied with BF), mom gets engorged which makes all of the above worse,
quits.
Scene 2B : Baby will open but thrusts his tongue forward to guard his airway
(Righard; Widstrom). This presses the nipple tip against the hard palate
where it rubs on the rugae. Result is nipple damage, poor milk transfer,
hungry baby, engorged breast, and mom quits.
I wish I had a dollar for every baby like these that I've worked with - I'd
be a driving a brand-new teal blue Porsche convertible instead of a 1991
Corolla station wagon with 145,000 miles on it! Correcting oral aversion
and/or tongue thrust is NOT easy nor quick, and is often very frustrating
for all concerned. It's even harder if mom quits BF - then the inappropriate
oral patterns get more deeply ingrained with longer-term sequelae such as
swallowing problems and speech disorders.
Scene 3: What kind of psychic trauma does this cause the baby? I heard one
person call it "oral rape." Stress/Trauma research and new knowledge of
infant awareness/cognition should give us plenty of reason to re-think the
necessity and possible consequences of suctioning except in the most
life-threatening situations. Check out this site
http://birthpsychology.com/apppah/index.html for some info on this concept.
Linda J. Smith, BSE, FACCE, IBCLC
Bright Future Lactation Resource Centre
Dayton, OH USA
http://www.bflrc.com
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