CDC Report:Hospitals don't do enough to promote BFing

[brittone2]

NAK-
no big surprise, unfortunately, but here's a story about the report.


http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/111330.php

[StantonHyde]

My hospital did a great job. Yes, they sent me home with a bag the first time--thank God because my milk did not come for a long time and I was desperate for anything and I grabbed that sample and used it. It had a condensed pamphlet on breastfeeding--it was so good I went out and bought the book. I would not have known to get it otherwise. I also did not want my babies in with me when I was sleeping--I did ask them to bring them to me when they cried. But I needed rest.

My problems were when I went home. I think there should be a free appointment with an LC about a week after to check on things and see how it is going etc. I made my own appt with a private LC--and paid for it but I had no recommendations on who to call. I did not want to call LLL because, in my experience, they have been too hard core and I needed someone who would work with me. I found a great store with a wonderful LC (The Lactation Station :love5: ) and she was awesome. I bfd both kids for a year and it worked out well. But with DS, it was a hard first month (preeclampsia so 36 week baby, sick mom, tough recovery etc, and PPD).

So my vote is more for support after moms leave the hospital--and that is going to have to come from insurance companies or government grants.

[niccig]

I agree with more support once you are home. Our hospital is generally good, but not when a child is born on Christmas Day. I kept asking for a LC knowing there were an available resource, and no one was there. Our peds office has a LC on staff, so we went to her when DS was 2 days old. She was amazing - she told DH it was his responsibility to help hold DS as I got him latched on and that meant he had to get up during the night to help with feedings. He got up for every feeding for a week and then DS and I had worked out our technique and didn't need more help. If it wasn't for the LC, I would have been stuck with my mother's advice, and she never breastfed a baby yet thought she knew everything about it.

[mdb78]

My hospital was great. When the nurses saw that I wanted to give up on bf they just kept encouraging me. The nurse even made sure I spoke to an LC before I was discharged. I noticed that they pretty much respected your decision. The other mom that I shared the room with the first night had chosen not to breastfeed and she said she wasn't pushed in any way to try.

I did go home with some formula samples in the bag that they give you, but that just standard.

[kedss]

Our hospital was great too, they didn't send any formula home, and beyond the normal checking up on us/changeover of nurses let me nurse her without trying to teach me how. :)

[SnuggleBuggles]

My birth center rocked- only lactation friendly items in my goodie bag. I remember reading Mothering magazine recently about the idea of trying to get hospitals to ban the marketing goodie bags and other paraphanaleia provided by the formula compaines. I really think that would be a great start. It would at least be something.

Beth

[egoldber]

Well that article pretty much describes my hospital experience with Sarah. She was healthy and full term, yet I was actively encouraged to give her formula to "help her be satisfied" when she was fussy so I could "get my rest". And my day nurse that I had the whole time was terrible at providing support and "forgot" to call the LC like I requested.

Amy was in the NICU so it was a different experience, but I had to fight the NICU RNs to not give formula even though I was producing and providing PLENTY of expressed milk for Amy's needs. Frankly, giving formula was just easier for them and it took me ripping a nurse a new one and getting the neo to write orders in her chart to get them to allow me to nurse on demand and to only use breastmilk.

Oh and my "breastfeeding bag" had formula samples. Nice.

[buddyleebaby]

My hospital sucked. I asked to see the LC for two days. They kept telling me she would come see me at such and such a time and she wouldn't show. She finally came to see me right before I was discharged and really was not all that helpful.
And they gave me a lovely "gift" of formula, which I passed on to my roommate who was FFing as SHE didn't get one.
DD roomed in so I know she was not given any formula, but I did have to keep reminding them that she was bf.
I don't necessarily think it is a hospital's job to promote breastfeeding to everyone. I just think it is their job to provide support to those who want to breastfeed, or at the very LEAST, not interfere.

[brittone2]

My hospital stay with DS was so-so. THe hospital was supposedly super pro BFing. We roomed in and so there were no pacis or formula given (and DH supervised when DS left the room for tests). However, I had some other mom friends who had babies that were given formula even though BFing was going perfectly well and they made abundantly clear to nursing staff that they did not want pacis/formula given.

There was a LC on staff. She was helpful. The nursing staff pretty much left us alone w/ nursing, but that was fine with me.

The hospital gave out bags and mine did have formula, which upset me as they were supposedly pursuing "baby friendly" status according to the WHO guidelines (which translates to the fact that they shouldn't be handing out formula to BFing moms). I took the bag and ice packs, and left the formula when I was discharged.

DD was born in a freestanding birth center. No formula samples, no separation whatsoever (even the hearing test was done bedside with me right there) and we were home 4-5 hours after DD's birth.

My SIL has 5 kids. My youngest niece was over 9lbs at birth and was immediately whisked away to get her sugar levels checked and was immediately supplemented with glucose rather than giving her mom a chance to nurse (and in talking w/ several physicians here and elsewhere, this is not medically necessary...she should have been allowed to nurse her). Then the baby wasn't hungry, got sleepy...and BFing got off to a bit of a rough start. She was also told she *HAD* to supplement as her DD had jaundice. They told her that the baby was going to have brain damage, etc. (her bili counts were in the low teens, and she was peeing and pooping completely fine). SIL had 4 previous kids, so she just nodded and nursed the baby at home and skipped formula, and of course, everything was fine (as the baby was never dehydrated and her numbers went up and then worked their way down).

[MamaMolly]

I got lucky. Not because I had great support from the hospital or afterward, but because I was able to successfully nurse IN SPITE of my hospital experience. Let me preface this by saying I knew very little about the hospital I was using for the delivery, I'd returned to the US only 4 weeks before, and had met with my OB all of 2 times before I delivered.

DD was born at 36 weeks (a very healthy 7lb 4 oz and 9s on both of her Apgars!) and was whisked away to the nursery immediately following her birth. This is standard for this hospital. They gave her formula, then they 'thought' she 'might' be grunting (a sign of distress), took her blood sugar levels which were a bit elevated, so she was admitted into the NICU. She only stayed 4 days (due to jaundice), but as she was immediately given an IV ('just in case' ~standard at this hospital) she wasn't hungry so she wasn't highly motivated to nurse.

While some of the nurses were great, they weren't very helpful about positioning the baby, etc. In their defense, they don't see a lot of babies there that BF, so I understand that part. But then there were the ones who really thought I was stupid to BF and treated me badly about it. I even had one NICU nurse tell me she wasn't going to allow me to nurse!!! until the Dr. ok'd it. Yeah, right. I hid behind the curtain and gave it a shot. This little act of rebellion got me labeled as THAT WACKY MOM WHO WANTS TO EBF and I got a lot of eyerolling and defensiveness from the staff about it. Honestly, I thought I was really polite and just reiterated that I'd rather DD nurse, that it was important to me, but they treated me like I was jumping up and down, foaming at the mouth and screaming. What.ev.er.

I never once saw an LC. I had a nice nurse in recovery who took pity on me and brought me a hospital pump and I used that in my room. If it weren't her, I don't know that things would have worked out as well as they did.

When we left the hospital, I had to promise a sacred vow that I'd offer formula to her after every BF session. I did for a few sessions and DD vomited up the formula she was given. Turns out she has a bad dairy allergy.

I'm stubborn, I stuck with it, and we ended up EBF to 12 months, and weaned at 16mos and 11 days. Oh, and the breastfeeding booklet I got in my bag from Similac was really the most helpful thing I read on the subject. It was like my Bible those first few weeks! Ironic, ain't it??

[pb&j]

Our hospital was great too, they didn't send any formula home, and beyond the normal checking up on us/changeover of nurses let me nurse her without trying to teach me how. :)

I delivered DS at the same hospital, and agree that they were awesome. LC's on duty 7 days/wk, absolutely no suggestion of formula once I said we were BFing, lots of kudos for BFing. There was a sample can of formula in the formula co. goody bag, but the nurses told us to open the bag (it was sealed) before we left, and leave the formula in the room. :D

After hearing about others' experiences, I am so glad I delivered where I did, esp since my milk did not come in before I left the hospital.

[JTsMom]

I had absolutely no bf support in the hospital when DS was born. His sugar was low- they gave him glucose water. Then they gave him formula- twice IIRC. I kept saying I wanted to try to get him to the breast ASAP, but it took a couple of hours b/c they wanted to get me to my room first.

The nurses didn't help with positioning or latch at all- even though I kept asking them to check and see if I was doing things correctly. Thank goodness I read as much as I had before the birth, or I would have been totally lost. We roomed in (the hospital doesn't even have a nursery), and the nurses would ask how long DS stayed on each side for, but that was it.

DS was transferred out at 24 hours. An LC never came to see me, even though I stayed for another 20ish hours. My nurse at that point did help me figure out pumping, but it took her a while, so I'm sure it wasn't something she had done too many times.

The only positive thing I can say was that a NICU nurse (who I spoke with for all of 30 mins while they were prepping DS for transfer) told me that pumping was a very powerful thing I could do for DS, and that gave me a big boost.


After the transfer, it was pretty dismal too. DS hadn't eaten the entire time we had been seperated (b/c of testing and b/c they didn't know if he'd need immediate surgery), and he was starving by that point. When I walked in and saw him, he had a pacifier and was sucking away. That, and the bottles he got subsequently led to really serious nipple confusion. His nurse convinced me that the best thing to do was to get fluids into him so that we could see if his kidneys were functioning well, so that we could go home. My milk wasn't in yet, so after I'd nurse him, we'd supplement with formula. In ICU, they are so big on scheduling everything, it made it really difficult to nurse on demand, but I did my best, and I pumped as well. I tried to stay with DS as much as possible, but I had to get a couple hours of sleep overnight (you can't sleep in the ICU), so I slept in the parents' room, and would try to wake myslef up to pump and check on him every couple of hours. Twice I caught them giving him formula instead of the milk I had worked so hard to pump b/c "he just wouldn't wait for us to heat it up". I was livid.

By the time we got home, the nipple confusion was so severe, and my confidence was so shattered, I thought we'd never get past it. I was too afraid to call LLL b/c I thought they would judge me b/c of the supplementing (which is ridiculous, but that's what I believed at the time), so I called the LC associated with the hospital where DS was born. She basically just told me to keep trying. Not helpful.

Eventually, we got through it, but it was REALLY hard, and REALLY scary. It was especially important that DS gain weight well b/c of his condition, so the whole thing was very stressful.

Then, to top it all off, when he had his surgery at just shy of 3 months, he was unable to nurse for over a week. After that, he ate very little. I'm the world's worst pumper, and how in the world I managed to maintain any supply through that, is a miracle. Nobody at the hospital could give me any advice that helped, and the LC was out of town the whole week. I cried and cried b/c I was so terrified that I was going to lose my supply, and ruin the one thing that DS loved more than anything. Once of the nurses saw me, and called a friend of hers who had a lot of bf knowledge. She talked to me for about 15 mins, and gave me enough info to keep me going.

So, in both instances, the only help I got was just by accidental encounters with a special nurse.