| How to Know a Health Professional is Not Supportive of Breastfeeding- S/he tells you that there is no such thing as nipple confusion and you should start
giving bottles early to your baby to make sure that the baby accepts a bottle nipple.
Why
do you have to start giving bottles early if there is no such thing as nipple confusion?
Arguing that there is no evidence for the existence of nipple confusion is putting the
cart before the horse. It is the artificial nipple, which no mammal until man had ever
used, and even man, not commonly before the end of the nineteenth century, which needs to
be shown to be harmless. But the artificial nipple has not been proved harmless to
breastfeeding. The health professional who assumes the artificial nipple is harmless is
looking at the world as if bottle feeding, not breastfeeding, were the normal physiologic
method of infant feeding. By the way, just because not all or perhaps even not most babies
who get artificial nipples have trouble with breastfeeding, it does not follow that the
early use of these things cannot cause problems for some babies. It is often a combination
of factors, one of which could be the using of an artificial nipple, which add up to
trouble.
S/he tells you that you must stop breastfeeding because your are sick or your baby is
sick, or because you will be taking medicine or you will have a medical test done. There
are occasional, rare, situations when breastfeeding cannot continue, but often health
professionals only assume that the mother cannot continue and often they are wrong. The
health professional who is supportive of breastfeeding will make efforts to find
out how to avoid interruption of breastfeeding (the information in white pages of the blue
Compendium of Pharmaceutical Specialties is not a good reference; every drug is
contraindicated according to it as the drug companies are more interested in their
liability than in the interests of mothers and babies). When a mother must take
medicine, the health professional will try to use medication which does not require the
mother to stop breastfeeding. (In fact, very few medications require the mother to
stop breastfeeding). It is extremely uncommon for there to be only one medication which
can be used for a particular problem. If the first choice of the health professional is a
medication which requires you to stop breastfeeding, you have a right to be concerned that
s/he has not really thought about the importance of breastfeeding.
S/he is surprised to learn that your 6 month old is still breastfeeding. Many
health professionals believe that babies should be continued on artificial baby milk for
at least nine months and even twelve months, but at the same time seem to believe that
breastmilk and breastfeeding are unnecessary and even harmful if continued longer than six
months. Why is the imitation better than the original? Shouldn't you wonder what this
line of reasoning implies? In most of the world, breastfeeding to 2 or 3 years of age is
common and normal.
S/he tells you that there is no value in breastmilk after the baby is 6 months or older.
Even if it were true, there is still value in breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a
unique interaction between two people in love even without the milk. But it is not true.
Breastmilk is still milk, with fat, protein, calories, vitamins and the rest, and the
antibodies and other elements which protect the baby against infections are still there,
some in greater quantities than when the baby was younger.
S/he tells you that you must never allow your baby to fall asleep at the breast. Why
not? It is fine if a baby can also fall asleep without nursing, but one of the advantages
of breastfeeding is that you have a handy way of putting your tired baby to sleep. Mothers
around the world since the beginning of mammalian time have done just that. One of the
great pleasures of parenthood is having a child fall asleep in your arms, feeling the
warmth he gives off as sleep overcomes him. It is one of the pleasures of breastfeeding,
both for the mother and probably also for the baby, when the baby falls asleep at the
breast.
S/he tells you that you should not stay in hospital to nurse your sick child because it
is important you rest at home. It is important you rest, and the hospital which is
supportive of breastfeeding will arrange it so that you can rest while you stay in the
hospital to nurse your baby. Sick babies do not need breastfeeding less than a
healthy baby, they need it more.
by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC |
|
| 