World Breastfeeding Week

Nursing my babies, moments after birth, cords still attatched.

Lili








Jax


There is a great pocast of one of our local LLL leader interviewing Linda Smith, one of the authors of Impact of Birthing, Practices on Breastfeeding: Protecting the Mother and Baby Continuum and it was full of fabulous information. She had alot of statistics on the negative impacts of epidurals, pitocin, episiotomy, etc. on the breastfeeding relationship. The percentages of babies that breastfed poorly on their first feeding after moms were given routine medications (mainly pitocin and epidurals) were staggering. I had read an article on the impact of epidurals in Mothering Magazine awhile back, and I was always aware of the problems C-sections can cause in the breastfeeding relationship but I hadn't heard any direct statistics regarding Pitocin. I can't tell you how many people just in my circle of friends in Iowa have been told that their baby's "couldn't suck" or that their baby's were "lazy eaters" etc. (Of three of the people in my neighborhood that said that one had an epidural, one had an epidural and episiotomy and the other had a C-section.) Each of these mothers told me that the nurses and hospital LC's were the ones that told them they needed to bottlefeed. They also talked alot about how the problems can last up to a month (that's when the stopped tracking, so who knows how long that they can really last for) due to the half-lives of many medications. i.e. if the half life of a medication for an adult female is 20 minutes, for an infant it is around 8 hours. If it takes approx. 5 half-lives to rid your body of the medication your talking 40 hours for a newborn... Elizabeth also mentioned some info from the conference that isn't on the podcast interview. I had always heard the "your stomach is the size of your fist" mantra. So, don't freak out about toddlers eating too little because their tummies are only the size of their fist. Well, a newborn babies stomach is the size of a CHERRY. I know we don't produce gallons of colostrum but I think there's enough to fill a cherry! She also talked about the amazing difference that the first 24 hours makes in a breastfeeding relationship. Babies fed 12 or more times in the first 24 had esentiallly zero problems latching or breastfeeding. Dropping that down to even just 10-11 feeding showed an increase in difficulty and problems significantly increased as the # of feedings decreased in the first 24 hours. In fact, there were major differences noted in babies who were fed in the first 20 minutes! Again, everyone hears the mantra of establishing breastfeeding in the "first two hours of life", yet babies fed immediately after birth (before weighing, measuring, etc.) showed esentially zero problems in the breastfeeding relationship whereas waiting even 20 minutes or more started to show an increase in problems. There was also a fun trial that Mary had observed. It wasn't a full blown study because she only had I think five mothers try this so it was just an observation, really. She said she had five moms (with unmedicated, natural births)place their newborn babies in between their breasts. (Babies were naked except for a diaper and moms were topless.) Each of the babies crawled enough to latch onto the breast, eat until full, un-latch, and then instinctively went to the other breast for the next feeding. No moms or other people assisted the babies.

Please check out the podcast, it is less than 15 minutes :)
http://www.lalecheleague.org/mp3/LLL_Podcast_ImpactOfBirthingPracticesOnBreastfeeding.mp3