dear bonnie,
i have no protocol to share with you, but each hospital i visit in has the
same problem. now, could some of our neonatologists (nancy?) share with us
where these ideas come from? the three hour schedule, the nurse that literally
rips the baby away from the mother or shoves the bottle into her hand after
"allowing" five minutes feeding time saying "the baby gets too tired
breastfeeding" and "the baby must have three hours between feedings" and then
- the real kicker - "when you take the baby home, you will SO GLAD she is on a
three hour schedule!"

yeah, right. these are the moms that call and wonder why their baby is crying
so much. very restful!

so many of the things i accept as being accurate reflections, such as babies
needing to eat "when they need to eat" (duh) and preemies needing to eat often
to grow, and bottlefeeding being more tiring and physiologically stressful
than breastfeeding - why haven't any of these hospital people heard of these
concepts? are they so radical, so new, so untested?

the hospital i am dealing with currently has lots of interesting ideas. no
SNS, no test weighing (but they are happy to suck out stomach contents and
measure), and no unlimited nursing even when the baby is not on holding
restrictions. i know perfectly well that the mothers are assessed on how
responsive they are to their babies, but when they are getting mixed messages,
how are they supposed to react?

"hold your baby as much as you want, and by the way, why weren't you here for
the six o'clock feeding?!?!?"

versus

"go ahead and get your sleep, don't worry, we can do the feeding, no problem,
you need your rest to make milk for the baby, and if you don't have enough, we
can just give him formula, no, of course we don't have a rooming in place for
you and your baby, or a nursing footstool, or anything other than the rocking
chair right in the middle of the walkway for you to sit in with him" and

"let's put him back in his little bed, he is so tired now."

kangaroo care? must be something they do in australia.

NOT stepping down from the soapbox

carol brussel IBCLC
denver where we also have shirt sleeve/iced coffee weather - whee!