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Born to Breastfeed
Why Birth Matters to the Nursing Relationship By Teri Brown
Jacobi believes that even more than the quality of birth, breastfeeding success lies in the hospital's attitude. "An alert, awake baby will crawl up the mom's body in less than an hour and self-attach to the breast," she says. "This is well known in Europe, where midwives attend most births and allow infants to crawl to the breast rather than snatching the baby away from the mother's body so we can measure, count, identify and inject the baby with vitamin K and instill eye ointment."
Jacobi believes that by taking the baby away to a warming bed and cleaning the baby of the amniotic fluid, we eliminate the baby's chance to find the mom's breast by smell, thus complicating the baby's ability to begin breastfeeding easily.
Dr. Andrea Crivelli-Kovach, director of community health programs for the department of Medical Science and Community Health at Arcadia University, believes that the optimal time to begin breastfeeding is right after birth. "This is the best time to initiate nursing since the baby is awake for usually two hours following delivery," she says. "After that, they tend to go into a deep sleep, and it is more difficult to wake them and get them interested in nursing."
Dr. Crivelli-Kovach gives the following tips to help mothers ensure that their birth experience helps and does not hinder breastfeeding success:
- Know exactly what you want before you deliver. Do you want to breastfeed exclusively, breastfeed and supplement, deliver in a Labor/ Delivery/Recovery/Post-Partum room with rooming-in, use a pacifier? This is important because the hospitals generally will follow standard procedures unless a mother states she wants something other than that.
- Put into writing the type of birth experience you want and how you want the staff to handle your baby. For example, a woman who chooses to nurse exclusively needs to tell the hospital staff that she wants no formula or water from a bottle given to her baby.
- If possible, it is best to avoid drugs during delivery and to nurse immediately following delivery. Generally, most hospitals will allow the baby to remain with Mom for an hour or so after the birth so the couple can get to know each other.
- Limit visitors. Most hospitals now have open visiting hours, which means people can visit any hour of the day or night. Some women are embarrassed to nurse in front of guests, and they will put off nursing the baby to see visitors. If this happens, the baby may not want to nurse when the mother is ready to nurse, and the baby may end up getting a bottle of formula in the nursery if the mother refuses to nurse when the baby is hungry.
- New mothers need to realize that the most successful nursing experience comes from realizing that the baby will tell you when he/she is hungry and how much they need to eat at any given point in time. This is referred to as demand feeding and certainly is NOT spoiling a baby. The new mom and the baby are a nursing couple, and as such, will develop their own way of communicating and interacting. No one else's timetable or way of doing things should dictate this relationship. It is unique and special.
