Brooke's Story:  Poor Advice

The night my daughter was born was the happiest day of my life.  I cried with delight when I held her to my breast for the first time and watched as she opened her lips, latched on, and contentedly nursed.  The nurses at the hospital told me to remember the phrase "belly to belly" when she nursed.  As simple as that advice was, it worked! 

I was lucky that Chyanne instinctively knew what to do from the start, as there was no one who would help me.  Except for the "belly to belly" advice, the hospital staff seemed to do all they could to discourage me from breastfeeding, even going so far as to tell me one night that I was starving my child by denying her a bottle of formula.

Chyanne woke up every hour, screaming.  She was not allowed to room-in with me because I was recovering from a C-section, which meant that a nurse had to bring her to me all night long.  I happily put Chyanne to my breast and didn't mind the loss of sleep, but the nurses were tired of having to bring her to me constantly.  I was advised that Chyanne was screaming because she as hungry and since my milk hadn't come in yet, I should feed her formula so everyone could get some sleep. I refused.

Instead, I put my mewling baby to my breast and each time she immediately started sucking away, as if there were no tomorrow.  Since my understanding is that infants are designed to need only colostrum for the first day or two after birth, I believe she was nursing not from outright hunger, but for the closeness.

Throughout the rest of my three-day hospital stay, the nurse continually urged me to give Chyanne formula.  My refusal, of course, brought scowls on the nurses' faces.

Since then, I have not had good luck with the medical establishment.  Chyanne is currently seen by a group of pediatricians/certified nurse-practitioners who is uniformly not encouraging of breastfeeding.  I've received so much wrong advice that I've finally come to the conclusion hat I'd rather switch than fight a losing battle.  They have told me that formula is nearly as good as breast milk, that the notion of fewer otitis media occurrences among breastfed infants and toddlers is "controversial," and that I should cease breastfeeding whenever my baby h as  stomach virus.  This advice, along with telling me that I should let my baby scream herself to sleep, the the family bed is wrong and should be discouraged, and insisting on routine urinary catheterization without anesthetics or sedation of any kind, has led me to seek out another practice.

What makes me the most sad and frustrated is that this practice is not alone in its ignorance.  I am in contact with many nursing mothers via the Internet who report similar, and in many cases, worse transgressions.  This is scary to me.  If I can't trust the medical establishment, who can I trust?

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