Breastfeeding After A C-Section

[arianamama]

Breastfeeding after a cesarean presents some special challenges. These include maternal pain and fatigue, delayed access to baby, increased supplementary feedings, separation of mother and baby, blood loss causing anemia, mechanical problems in feeding, interference from medications, etc. Despite these problems many mothers are successful. See the

Comments

[housepoet]

perhaps a link to the http://mommychats.com site as well. They have a Biweekly Cesarean Awareness Chat.

info

Wednesday April 6, 2005 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm PST

This event repeats every other week.

The next reminder for this event will be sent in 23 hours, 2 minutes.

Event Location: www.mommychats.com

Note: This chat is EVERY OTHER Wednesday...4-5pm pacific, 5-6pm mountain, 6-7pm central, 7-8pm eastern In the "Pregnancy_Birth" chat room.

Chat with Tonya Jamois, the president of the International Cesarean Awareness Network, Inc. (ICAN--www.ican-online.org). Come and learn of trends in cesarean and VBAC and find out how you can get the birth you want. ICAN is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve maternal-child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery and promoting VBAC.

[arianamama]

You're just pimping that wherever you can, huh? ;-)

I think I told you before that those women are awesome. ICAN is *why* I had a VBAC with my second son. The San Diego chapter, where Tonya lives, is very active and has monthly meetings. I always wanted to go but it was just a tiny bit too far for me. I learned sooo much about birth from hanging out in their yahoo group.

Is there a link to an info page about the chats (I looked a little at both ICAN and MommyChats and didn't see anything). Just thought a link with the info would keep it "cleaner", ya know?

[housepoet]

yah, I wish that she had like user pages for each of the chats that she does, maybe that is something that I can bring up to her, with chat info and whatnot on there.

Yah, I am pimping it because that is a very important cause as well. I didn't have a cs but I was close to having one. It was scary.

[arianamama]

How is that? I didn't want to put all the info, but I'm not sure if that's enough or not.

I totally understand your pimpage. Natural birth and vaginal births are a big deal to me too. I have found myself thinking maybe if we get this BF mentor thing off the ground we could find someone to do a similar thing with birth for pregnant women. You know. One thing at a time though. ;-)

[simplymelodious]

Let's see I found these sites with pics and other various information.
http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/ofhc/Article.asp?articleID=1717\
http://www.allaboutmoms.com/breast.htm

Also, most women need to tell the dr's, nurses, anyone about their wishes to breastfeed only. It needs to be put on the babies bassinette in the hospital. I found even with my wishes clearly stated over and over I was pushed to formula feed all of my children.

Besides that, the information looks great so far! Yay.

[arianamama]

Cool. See when I wrote this I was colored by my experience and fortunately NO ONE even suggested formula or pacifiers or anything to me in the hospital despite the fact that he was losing more weight than normal. They did give me a formula diaper bag at the end of my stay (and I was all "cool freebies" because I wasn't a boob nazi yet)

I'm just realizing I also forgot birth plans!

[simplymelodious]

With Lucas no one suggested formula but he was given some in the nursery before I came out of my anesethic(damn I can't spell that tonight)

With Leah I was very adamant that she was to be breastfed only, there was a sign on her bassinette and everything and some nurse writes "finger/cup feeds ok" and she was formula fed while I slept after I had her because they didn't want to wake me :(

With Mark and Madelyn I'm embarrassed to admit I was bullied into letting them have formula because they were "comfort" nursing. They did not have formula once I left the hospital.

I also left with TWO little formula freebie bags as well *gag* me.

[arianamama]

some nurse writes "finger/cup feeds ok"

Oh wow. I'd be so so super pissed. Our Lamaze/bf teacher DRILLED it into us that you don't let the baby out of your sight. So while I was being stiched up DH went with the baby to the nursery. Once I was all alone when a nurse came to take him for weighing. I let him go but once he was gone more than a few minutes I dragged myself down to the nursery and he was just sitting there in his little bassinette thing. I was like "are you done?" and she said "oh we can keep him for a while." Yeah, right!

So did you have 3 c-sections? You're the queen breastfeeder on a lot of topics, huh?

[bafleyanne]

I've got this picture, which is not *quite* football hold since I'm not holding his head, but he is in that sort of position.

http://pixel.dnsalias.net/gallery/0901/aap

(And gosh, he was little. 2 months old in that picture, taken 9/10/01, and he looks like a newborn.)

[arianamama]

Oh that's so cute. You know I think a link to that pic saying that pretty soon you'll be an expert and able to latch baby on easily might be good.

[preternatural]

By the way, I finally got my nursing story written and posted in my journal:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/preternatural/242127.html

Figured I'd comment about that here since it does involve BF after a section!

[arianamama]

Cool, I'll link your story too!

[acidflowers]

question about the delayed access to baby

my daughter didn't want to nurse right away when i finally got to hold her, she only nursed a couple times in the first 24 hours, no matter how hard i tried, she wasn't interested until the second day
but all the nurses told me not to worry?
i had no idea that you should nurse within the first hour, even though that would've been impossible for me being as incapacitated as i was :|

[arianamama]

Nursing as soon as possible after birth has advantages for mothers who have had cesareans just as it does for mothers who deliver vaginally. It promotes bonding, provides stimulation to bring the milk in sooner, releases the hormone oxytocin to help the uterus contract, provides the baby with the immunological advantages of colostrum, and takes advantage of the fact that the newborn's sucking urge is strongest in the first couple of hours after birth. http://www.storknet.com/cubbies/breast/AS-bfaftercesarean.htm... )

[acidflowers]

wow, yeah, it all makes sense now
i'm thanking my lucky stars right now that we didn't have more problems than we could've :\

thanks for all the info