hospital obligation to bf....
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| Mon, 08-30-2004 - 10:15am |
2 recent incidences I've come across IRL spark this question.
MY SIL just delivered in a hospital I routinely refer to as a "baby-factory" They have a 33% section rate and are "very" interventionist. However, they have the best NICU in the area and many people choose it for that reason alone (ot, but that makes no sense to me unless you know you have a high-risk baby -- i delivered another hopspital which could've had my children there in under 10 minuts if necessary -- but i digress).
Anyway, i had heard some really awful things about the pp nurses at said hopsital...2 friends were told they had 20 min to latch the baby on -- if not, she had to have a bottle right then and there...ugh. SIL had a pretty average delivery and felt great. my new neice latched on well and all was going fine in the hospital. However, she was pushed EVERY time a nurse came in to give her a bottle because "her milk wouldn't be in for days and the baby would starve." SIL had taken a bf class which offered much conflicting information to what the pp nurses said, so she refused the formula. When I came to visit she asked me if she was right to refuse, and she also called the bf instructor. I later learned that this hospital has "done away" with lactaction services. One pp nurse happens to be an LC so if you're lucky you get her.
Another friend had a section for a breech recently and her husband was unable to spend nights at the hospital (they have an older child). She was not alllowed to nurse the baby unless she had a visitor in the room or a nurse. They would not leave her alone with the baby given the medication she had been on for "safety reasons." She only nursed the baby a handful times...in fact she barely spent much time with the baby as caring for her other child prevented DH from being there more than a few hours and her family is not local. When the baby was in the nursery he had formula; if DH was there, she nursed.
Is a hospital obligated to help a mother establish a good bF relationship? A hospital is obligated to provide a low-salt diet to a high blood pressure patient. Given the medical recommendation to BF and the critical early days, is this any different?
p.s. Both babies are currently nursing well despite these scenarios. However, I think it's just as likely things could've went south.
p.p.s. I'm barely even lurking anymore -- busy summer, too mnay beach days and i'm also feeling a bit green -- 16 weeks pg. However, I hope to be able to jump back in soon?

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Just because we have basic health care it doesn't mean we are not allowed to have our own insurance to upgrade if we so choose. So even if the US adopted something like our system, you will still be allowed to have your insurance, you wouldn't have to "give up" your insurance.
Judi
No it's not necessarily EASIER.
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
You DO know that you can help without actually doing the feedings, don't you?
Formula feeders are certainly entitled to the same "help" that breastfeeding mothers are.
The big problem I have with formula feeders getting the nursing staff doing the feeding for them is that it's not a fair representation of what formula feeding entails.
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
" Someone went to so far as to even suggest a "special mixing room" (not a quote) for those who chose formula to shuffle themselves off to everytime they need to prepare a bottle."
LOL!
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
I watched via tele-conference part of the most recent international SIDS conference and in it there was a very interesting study done on women with babies in bassinets (the traditional kind with 4 sides) versus side-cars (where there are 3 sides and the 4th is not there, but the side-car is attached to the bed, so mom can reach over easily into the side-car).
They showed movies of moms with babies in side-cars and moms with babies in bassinets (they were those kind of speeded-up movies where you see the whole night in like 2 minutes ;-)). They showed brainwaves that go on during sleep cycles of the moms and babies in both instances.
Some of the summary points from this speaker were:
a) Mommies who had their babies in a side-car stayed in the same sleep cycle as their baby, as if they were co-sleeping. Mommies whose baby was in a bassinet did not. Either the Mom with the baby in the bassinet was spending her whole night sitting up every 5-10 min. to look at the baby (talk about tiring out a new mom!) b/c she couldn't see as clearly through the sides of the bassinet, couldn't touch the baby as easily over the top of the bassinet etc., OR the mom whose baby was in the bassinet was getting a nice good night's sleep but was turned with their back to the baby and her brainwaves were those of someone who was not co-sleeping, her sleep cycles did not match those of the baby's (contrary to the moms who had the side-car arrangement).
b) the ambiant air temperature around the baby was cooler in the cases where the baby was in a separate bassinet, where the mom's body temperature was not warming up the baby's environment (a warmer sleep environment is USUALLY a risk factor for SIDS) and yet the baby's OWN core body temperature was cooler when s/he was sleeping next to his/her mom (either completely co-sleeping or in a side-car but touching mom) than if sleeping alone! It was as if the calming presence of the mom (or something along those lines ;-)) helped the baby regulate their own body temperature better.
I'm not denying there could be a risk in co-sleeping when the mom is tired. But I think there are many other risks too both of co-sleeping AND of NOT co-sleeping and the risks have to be balanced out.
One baby dying is horrible. It is cause for investigation perhaps. But it is not necessarily a reason to end all co-sleeping. It is a reason to give good co-sleeping instructions, to get side-cars and to weed out possible risky persons for more drastic measures (the mom on medications that make her sleepy, the baby whose older siblings perished from SIDS or whatever...). That they had one baby die while sleeping with his/her mom does not necessarily mean that it is overall riskier b/c you might find that one baby died out of a total of say 20 who did it all together and yet if you continued on, you might find in the next few months no other babies died while co-sleeping and that 2 died while not co-sleeping. It could still happen.
I don't know and I don't know if you know whether that baby who died while co-sleeping was a healthy baby with no other issues (you said that no healthy baby has died while NOT co-sleeping, but does that same definition: "healthy" apply to the baby who died co-sleeping?).
Anyhow...I can sort of understand why they are scared and wanting to do just bassinets BUT I do disagree that it is "practically the same as co-sleeping". I for one was NEVER able to get a moment's sleep if my child was in a bassinet. I was one of those moms who spent every second sitting up and checking over the side of the bed. :-)
Fio.
http://zvb.nautadereede.nl/files/GoedGevoed_5_2.pdf
It is some sort of Dutch file on BF and co-sleeping but that is such a great photo to show their sidecars...I LOVE the look of them.
Fio.
I wonder how THIS works in the USA.
If your insurance covers a private room, are you guaranteed to get one?
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
Does that make sense?
Fio.
When I was in hospital with both kids I would snuggle with them while "resting my eyes" (I never can fall asleep with the baby beside me). I remember hearing a nurse come in when I was doing this with Allen and she called another nurse thinking I was sleeping and whispered "look how sweet a picture this is". I LOVE my hospital!
Now with this type of bed I think I could fall asleep!
Judi
(who also likes the pic of the t-shirt!)
With ds#1 I actually got a private room while only having semi private coverage. The reason for this was they only had private and semi private in maternity. If they have no wards they CAN'T charge your insurance for semi private, so they put me in a private so they could charge my insurance for semi-private coverage.
With ds#2 I was put in semi-private because they had expanded the maternity floor and put in one ward room of 3 people.
Judi
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