| Statements of Support | |
"Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Central Texas recognizes breastfeeding as primary preventative health care. The first days after the birth of a baby is the "learning phase" of breastfeeding. Mothers who wean during this time often do so because of problems that are easily solved with skilled lactational support. Loss of hospital-based lactation consultants puts mothers and babies at risk. Our hope is that all institutions will realize the cost-savings and long-term health benefits gained by support for breastfeeding."
May 11, 2004
CAPPA would like to make the following breastfeeding statement for use by the Austin Breastfeeding Task Force:
CAPPA believes in early breastfeeding support to help mitigate potential breastfeeding problems and provide a smooth transition into the postpartum period. The availability of lactation consultants on hospital postpartum units is essential to help mothers in need develop proper breastfeeding skills and overcome the "learning curve" that is associated with breastfeeding for some mothers. Recent studies show that one of the primary reasons mothers stop breastfeeding is a lack of support during the early days of breastfeeding. Without this key element, the relationship can flounder, and with it all the benefits of breastfeeding to both mother and baby. Support, along with promotion and protection, is one of the three crucial adjuncts to developing a healthy breastfeeding relationship. CAPPA recognizes lactation consultants to be an essential ingredient for support in the postpartum period.
Sincerely,
Laurel Wilson, CCE, CLE, CLD, CPPI
CAPPA Director of Lactation Programs
(720) 291-9115
PO Box 491448
Lawrenceville GA 30049
linfinitee@aol.com
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The American-Statesman reported on April 30, 2004 that lactation services at the Seton Healthcare Network are being dismantled. This article misrepresents the impact on both breastfeeding and the health of infants.
According to this article, breast-feeding specialists, or lactation consultants, are to be eliminated from four of the Seton hospitals. Pat Hayes, the Seton network's executive vice president and chief operating officer, is quoted as saying that the decisions were difficult, but cuts are being made in places that do not harm patient safety or care.
The benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and their infants are well established. Eliminating lactation services will increase the risk of having complications with the infant including jaundice, dehydration, and poor growth. It is clear that a good lactation program can lower these complications that occur in the immediate neonatal period as well as increase our breastfeeding rates.
Mothers who wish to breastfeed will find it hard to obtain help while they are still in the hospital. The first few days after delivery are crucial to many mothers who choose to breastfeed and lactation consultants provide information and support that makes for a successful and safe transition home.
Further, since breastfeeding has been show to improve the overall health status of our infants, breastfeeding should be the goal we seek as healthcare professionals.
Successful self-supporting breastfeeding programs exist in the United States that increase breastfeeding rates, decrease hospital costs, and improve the health of communities. The Seton system is in an ideal position to positively effect health care in the city of Austin by adopting a progressive approach to breastfeeding.
Audelio Rivera, MD, FAAP
President, Mothers' Milk Bank at Austin
Gretchen Flatau, MPA
Executive Director, MMBA
Kim Updegrove, CNM, MSN, MPH
Clinical Coordinator, MMBA
Breastfeeding is at the core of normal infant growth and development. The incidence of ear infections and asthma are less than half in breastfeed infants, and IQ runs 10 pts higher than their bottle-fed counterparts. If breastfeeding is not established and supported by the time of hospital discharge, it is seldom successful afterward. Supporting new mothers in nursing their newborns is one of the critical functions of the maternity ward. The maternity nurses are already completely overextended, and how can they possibly take on a new responsibility when they are already struggling to perform their minimum duties?
Dr. John Day, MD
Central Family Practice
(512) 371-9260
To Whom It May Concern:
As nurses, our responsibility is the health, growth and well-being of our patients, and as perinatal nurses, we believe that professional lactation consultants are vital to the immediate and long-term health of our patients.
Successful breastfeeding builds confidence in a new mother; she knows that she is providing something special and important for her infant that she alone can give. At the bedside in Labor and Delivery and in Mother/Baby, we see first hand what a fragile thing that confidence is, and how quickly a mother can become discouraged if her baby does not breastfeed easily. Nurses value that breastfeeding bond, and we rely heavily on lactation consultants when we are not able to establish it.
There is a significant difference in the level of skill with which an experienced nurse and a lactation consultant can address breastfeeding problems. A skilled nurse provides education and encouragement for the mother, demonstrates and assesses proper latch, and can work with a balky or sleepy baby to get him on the breast, but if our efforts fail, where can we turn for help without lactation support?
A lactation consultant can diagnose and correct or compensate for problems with the latch, or with the baby's oral anatomy or the motion he makes with his tongue. They work with the difficult, slightly premature babies whose coordination at sucking and swallowing is poor. Focused on breastfeeding, they can consistently give the half hour or more at the bedside several times a day, which is often needed to solve breastfeeding problems, when nurses' availability fluctuates with census and patient acuity. They are (or were) in the hospital day in and day out, providing continuity of expertise where skill levels among nursing staff may differ.
Three of the lactation consultants now gone from Brackenridge were fluent in Spanish, providing a depth to breastfeeding education for Spanish-speaking mothers that only a few of the nurses can match.
Lactation consultants are knowledgeable about medications and mothers milk, and offer expert recommendations to nurses and doctors alike about breastfeeding in the case of infectious or chronic illness. Their support in these areas ranges throughout the hospital; consultants work with families of sick children and well as with lactating mothers admitted for medical treatment or trauma.
Lactation consultants are efficient
because they are usually successful; the investment in time they spend at the
bedside is not wasted. They shorten hospital stays by finding solutions to the
medical problem of poor feeding which can often keep babies in the hospital
for an extra day or more.
We are certain that without lactation consultants available in the hospital
that we are going to begin sending more and more mothers and babies home with
unresolved breastfeeding problems, because we know that we nurses are often
unable to establish breastfeeding in the presence of difficulties. We fear that
a large percentage of mothers who go home without really knowing how to breastfeed
will quickly give up, and that breastfeeding rates in out city will drop correspondingly,
with all the long-term health consequences for mothers and infants that that
implies.
We urge the Seton Network to re-evaluate the relationship between professional lactation support and the health and safety of our patients. If, as a community, we wish to see breastfeeding couples flourish, we must continue to offer true expertise in breastfeeding to mothers and babies.
[A hard copy of this letter is circulating at Brackenridge Hospital and Seton
Hospital is still gathering nurses' signatures]
Texans for Midwifery-Austin
believes that breastfeeding support is essential to quality maternity care,
and to The Midwives Model of Care. As a supporter of the Mother-Friendly Childbirth
Initiative, we believe that breastfeeding provides the best nourishment for
newborns and infants, and that hospitals and birth centers should provide an
optimal environment for the promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding.
contact: Amy Chamberlain