becoming a baby friendly hospital

melmarie23, MSN, RN · May 2, 2012

I guess I'm a little confused. What about the moms who don't want to breastfeed? Would they not be allowed to have their babies at your hospital?

of course they can have their babies at our hospital. We provide them with formula to get them through their stay.

CrunchyMama, ASN, RN · May 2, 2012

I think it's great and wish all hospitals would go "baby friendly". My advice...stop the formula bags, get rid of the formula coupons in the breastfeeding bags, allow baby to be with mom as much as possible (if mom wants, of course)...assessments, vitals, etc can be done in the moms room, stop doing circs (NOT very baby friendly)....you'd probably have to get the doctors on board with that though and unfortunately not likely since it's $$$$. I agree with advice here regarding education!! I personally believe that all maternity staff should be lactation consultants. There's such misinformation out there...all a nurse needs to say is 1 thing and it can damage the breastfeeding relationship. Good luck...I think it's a great thing you're doing!

Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP · May 2, 2012

I think the BFHI is, on the whole, a good thing. There is such a thing as bad implementation, though, and that is what drives people away sometimes.

carrie_c · May 5, 2012

I think breastfeeding is a good thing, but I don't think it should be forced on mothers. Some just don't want to breast feed, and that's ok too. A lot of LCs try to push it on mothers.

BuckyBadgerRN, ASN, RN · May 8, 2012

Thanks for your info. I am a bit perplexted on how a Late Preterm infant falls into all of this. We have a very detailed admission order set for these infants and supplementation with formula is part of it. What do you do with a 35 wker who does not effectively nurse, mom is pumping and getting nothing?

Donor milk. I dontated over 8000 oz just to 2 milk banks with my last two babies and did 2 M2M donations, we are out there. I would not allow my baby to receive formula. (my now 17yo had to be readmitted for severe jaundice and the admittin DO ordered formula only. It did not turn out well for him. This momma bear KNOWS whats best for her babies! His argument was that "you need to flush that gunk out of him by making him poop". Um, dumbazz? What goes through a baby faster than breastmilk?

BuckyBadgerRN, ASN, RN · May 8, 2012

of course they can have their babies at our hospital. We provide them with formula to get them through their stay.

Or, have those parents provide the formula for their infants. MANY hospitals do this

dscrn · May 9, 2012

Are there really hsp that have parents bring in their own formula? What parts of the country? Haven;t heard about this,, What about mom's who are on WIC?

spacey · Jun 15, 2012

Curious if your hospital has a NICU. We are moving that direction as well and our NICU is looking at making some changes that the nurses have serious misgivings about. We feel like the Baby Friendly designation is aimed at WELL babies -- and besides pumping, early initiation of breast milk fdgs, and kangaroo care .. there are few elements of it that are appropriate to the NICU environment. No posts on this in a while in the NICU group -- just wanted some feedback from those commenting. thanks!

Fyreflie · Jun 15, 2012

Our baby friendly hospital had an NICU and the biggest thing was getting peds on board. Once that happened they rewrote the policies to encourage BM first, then supplementation as indicated by the baby's status.

In LD we supported this by 1) bringing hand expressed colostrum (even if only a few drops, which is enough to stabilize sugars in most babies) to the nursery as soon as possible after birth 2) getting mom to the nursery within the first 2 hours (even our c/s moms, in stretchers) and 3) keeping our late preterm infants with Mom as long as possible after delivery--depending on the pediatrician, even some of our late 34 seekers were allowed to stay for skin to skin and a first feeding attempt. Babes over 35 weeks often stayed with Mom in post partum in the absence of complicating risk factors and were given extra feeding support and encouraged to keep babies in Kangaroo care.

For babies at risk of low sugars we helped Mom hand express after each feeding attempt (nursery or not) and cup fed as well as at breast feeding. We rarely had to supplement in these cases and our NICU nurses were very supportive! But it did take a lot of re education and our peds being on board was a huge factor because it was reflected in our policies.

We also kept babes on PP who needed IV antibiotics and an NICU nurse would come give the antibiotics in the room as scheduled. Basically we tried to minimize our NICU admits by being really creative and decreased their workload a bit to make it easier for them to spend more time with moms whose babies really needed to be in the nursery helping them to pump or hand express and learn to latch their babies when ready. It worked really well all around.

Not like my current job--I brought FIVE CCs of hand expressed colostrum to the nursery from a PRIMIP recently (for her term baby admitted for observation for possible mec aspiration) and they refused to cup feed it even when the mom told them she wanted to BF exclusively. The nurse said 'oh we don't like cup feeding here, it's too much work' and dumped it in a bottle--then, when I brought mom and dad over and baby was rooting, told the mom she was looking too tired to safely hold her baby and that she should just go sleep all night and not worry about the next couple of feeds *aaaaaaahhhhhh* /endrant

In my second job out east we kept even babies on IV Dextrose rooming in with Mom and just checked their pumps and sites every hour on our rounds.

carrie_c · Jun 16, 2012

We have a special care nursery, not really a NICU. We only deliver babies 36 weeks or more. So most of the babies in there are still able to breast feed. There is special areas for the Moms to go. We don't do a lot of cup feeding, but we do a lot of finger feeding.