Don`t get me started on babies refusing to breastfeed.  I am in despair 
because almost all my home visits are connected with this issue.  And it all 
starts in the hospital: "you have no nipples, you can`t breastfeed, just 
pump and give in a bottle"; "you don`t have any milk yet and you don`t want 
your baby to be hungry do you, just pump and give in a bottle."
And since the mother`s hormonal system is stimulated by the baby`s sucking 
and saliva and does not respond kindly to the pump in the first days,  she 
can only get out a few drops and we then hear: "you see you have no milk, 
give a bottle of formula."  And so on....
The mothers who have been to good prenatal courses do try to resist. One 
reported that although she had severely inverted nipples, she wanted to give 
her milk through a syringe and not a bottle and the hospital nurse refused 
and told her that was "dangerous."

Unfortunately the hospital staff do not see the women when they get home. 
They do not witness as I do the utter frustration when the baby fights at 
the breast and then gobbles down a full bottle.  We try all the tricks which 
I won`t list here as you are all familiar with them, but the truth is that 
missing that window of opportunity, the first hours and days when babies are 
born knowing how to breastfeed, it is a battle.
I am always available to visit the mothers in the hospital to catch those 
early hours and some who are having planned Cesareans make a date with me to 
arrive as soon as they are reunited with the baby.  But as all counsellors 
know, we have to be careful not to randomly contradict the advice of the 
hospital staff because we don`t always get the whole story and it is not 
within our scope of practice to interfere while the mother is hospitalized.
But it really pains me that so many women return home with a baby who is 
fighting on the breast because he has got used to the easy way of feeding 
through the bottle, even if it is mother`s milk.
"But the new bottle teats are designed to be harder to suck, more like the 
breast," I hear constantly.  What nonsense.

Wendy Blumfield
NCT UK Trained Tutor prenatal teacher/breastfeeding counsellor
Founder former president Israel Childbirth Education Centre 

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