Hospitals, when encouraged to stop handing out formula company discharge
packs, supposedly can't afford to because then they would have to pay for
paper to write charts.  I think that is a pathetic argument, but there it
is. 

So, if a hospital suddenly is prepared to test milk samples from many many
women, and do the processing of all the donors, in order to be able to get
back milk to use in its own NICU or even maternity ward, I have to wonder
what is in it for them.  Chart forms?  Percs for doctors or other staff?
Cash dividends?  What has changed, that human milk is now something to be
valued, virtually overnight?  Please don't try to convince me that all these
hospitals have finally understood how important breastfeeding is - this has
little or nothing to do with breastfeeding.  

If these hospitals were at all committed to securing breastmilk for babies,
they would be willing and able to support the mothers giving birth in their
institutions to provide milk for their own babies and banked milk for the
NICU would be a moot point.  A long time ago someone posted to Lactnet on
the staff required to provide routine postnatal care to supposedly healthy
mothers and babies.  The time and effort put into doing completely
meaningless observations of women and infants while keeping them separated,
was astonishing for its disregard for the physiology of childbearing and for
its shocking waste of nursing womanpower, seen by one who works in the
public sector in a place where midwifery care is the standard, and is
provided to over 99% of all birthing women in the country (exceptions being
the ones who have their babies in cars on the way to a hospital).  Remember,
we lose fewer mothers and babies too, with our simple, professional approach
to normal childbearing.  And most of our neonatologists only know NEC from
reading about it.  Imagine if mothers and babies were kept together,
enabling staff to accomplish the necessary observations with half the
personnel per pair - what a boon that would be to getting feeding off to a
good start.  And, the staff would be less likely to see mothers with doughy
uteri, and babies with hypothermia or hypoglycemia, and both mothers and
babies would be happier and less in need of analgesia, comfort and
reassurance from staff.  Who knows? If hospitals actually started practicing
in a way more in line with the needs of mothers and babies, they might find
they could afford to buy their own chart forms.  

I am not being facetious.  I mean it.

Each NICU baby might need a few ounces of banked milk until mother was
producing enough, but honestly, the vast majority of women are more than
capable of producing milk for a little tiny premie, in short order too.  And
it would HAVE to be cheaper, and better, than sending milk to a company far
away for processing, and then getting *pasteurized* pooled milk back. 

What I fear is that hospitals are taking the current model for securing
'food' for babies, which is a mutual back-scratching deal with the formula
industry, and applying it to human milk.  That model has never benefited
babies, nor mothers, nor breastfeeding.  What does this new concept, of
collecting milk all over the country, sending it to be pooled for large
scale industrial processing, and sending it back again to hospitals, have to
do with promoting, supporting and protecting breastfeeding?  And what is in
it for the hospitals?  Do I have to re-think my lack of belief in Santa
Claus?

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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