Neonatal intensive-care unit | Parenting In the Loop

If you are planning on a hospital delivery and on breastfeeding there are questions you might want to ask when you tour the hospital. Supportive breastfeeding leads to successful breastfeeding.

Hospitals can vary very much in their support of the breastfeeding mother. The first few days of baby’s life is so important in the over all successful establishment of breastfeeding.

Arming yourself with good questions and getting the answers from the hospital staff will prepare you for what you will have to do to ensure a good feeding experience for you and your baby.

Some suggestions for a question list:

Ask your hospital if they are a Baby Friendly hospital i.e.. do they follow Unicef guidelines when it comes to breastfeeding?
What kid of lactation support does the hospital offer?
Do they give the moms formula free diaper bags?
Do they initiate breastfeeding and skin to skin contact immediately after delivery?
What is the breast feeding policy in the NICU

viaTop 10 Questions to Help You Find a Breastfeeding-Supportive Hospital | Best for Babes.

In my opinion, parents-to-be can never have too much information prior to the birth of their child.

Knowing what questions to ask is part of getting the information that you need at this time of transition to parenthood.

Banning early C-sections is a very interesting headline…I am not sure how hospitals in Oregon are going to actually enforce this hard line control on early, elective Cesarean sections.

Having a c-section for other than true medical necessity is never a good idea…the baby is still developing during the last weeks of pregnancy. Certainly it is not a great thing for a newborn to be shuttled off to the NICU for respiratory problems due to an early elective c-section…not to mention the added cost of the NICU care.

After delivery if a baby is in the NICU the bonding that is so important is difficult because mom is dealing with her own post-op pain and restrictions.
Breast feeding then becomes more difficult as well and cannot be established as early in the postpartum period as it generally is after a vaginal delivery.

It will be very interesting to watch how all this ‘plays out’ in Oregon and how it influences what is happening in other states as well.

Starting next week, many hospitals in Oregon will be taking a stand against early and elective Cesarean sections, MSNBC.com reports. C-sections have become commonplace, and federal statistics now show that surgical deliveries account for more than 30 percent of all U.S. deliveries.

However, Oregon officials are now working toward the goal of giving “babies more time for important development and to reduce costly complications after birth,” MSNBC reports.

Seventeen Oregon hospitals (including all nine birthing hospitals in the Portland area) are implementing a “hard stop” on these elective procedures, says the March of Dimes’ Oregon chapter, as quoted in the MSNBC report. According to a 2009 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, about 1 in 3 C-sections is performed before 39 weeks (37 to 41 weeks is considered full term).

via Oregon Plans Ban on C-Sections – Parenting on Shine.

Parenting in the Loop

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Help To Find a Breastfeeding-Supportive Hospital

Oregon Plans Ban on C-Sections …