h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great article - full of info.

I wonder what the prevelance of this type of feeding is?

It's grown a lot in the past few decades, but I'd venture a guess that it's still a long way from mainstream.

Both my daughters were breast-fed. Yet my parents and my brother and I were all bottle babies...

Interestingly, many hospitals (in southcentral Pennsylvania at least) offer 'lactation consultants' among their nursing staff (pun not intended). These nurses come and help a new mother work out any problems she may be having getting the newborn started with breast-feeding and answering any questions.

I've heard many horror stories about hospitals in which infants were given bottles of formula in the nursery and unintentionally thwarting a mother's attempts to breast feed.

Or indeed intentionally...

Most of the midwives in the UK encourage breastfeeding as well, and they come round and inspect the technique of new mothers.

They do try to stick to what the mum's want, although they are a bit too keen to pop a bottle in if the mum is not about for some reason. Babies don't need to eat for the first day or two, they can survive 12 hours while mum has a sleep.

Hi Lucinda,

Many parents use this type of feeding to give the breast feeding mother a break. If a breast feeding mother is able to express a whole feed it's possible for another person, probably the father, to feed the baby breast milk on the next feed, giving the mother something like a blissful 7-8 hours sleep!

This kind of system comes into its own in Special Care Baby units, where the babies are too ill or too premature to take a full feed in one go. The mother expresses milk, and it's stored, and even frozen, by the hospital staff in order to enable them to give the sick/premature baby breast milk on a regular basis. They often give small or sick babies a tiny amount of milk, something like 5mm every half hour or so, via a nasal gastic tube that leads directly to their stomach, because they can tolerate it that way.

It's also possible for lactating mothers to give donor milk to sick babies, although unfortunately this has become less commonly available nowadays, because of the prevalence of AIDS, and the difficulties involved in screening breast milk.

So prevelance is hard to estimate. I'm not sure of the current statistics for the number of mothers who chose to breastfeed. But many breastfeeding mothers probably try to express milk in order to have a back-up and not have to resort to a bottle.

For mothers in Special Care Units, expressing milk is essential, and most of them take it very seriously, because their children are critially ill and breast milk offers their children the best hope of survival.

How beautifully summarised Peta!

And yoou have captured in a nutshell so many of the reasons why I wrotte this article.

My baby was born 5 weeks premature on 5 April and was in the Special Care Unit within hours. One of her problems was a lack of a sucking reflex, to which the head nurse in Special care *for that shift only* had only one solution: formal through a gastro tube up her nose. She made no reference to expressing colostrum 9the vital first milk immediately after birth) and my baby would have missed that- and more I feel - if I hadn't been genned up and sufficiently indignant to go and find help from the post natal nurses.

Expressing colostrum is hard - less than a teaspoon in two hours is considered a good effort - but I kept at it, and as my milk came in we dispensed with the tube. But 'real' brestfeeding was still intermittent, and it was very hard to work at it sitting in the middle of the frantic Special Care Unit! Even once the baby was released back to the ward she was not feeding well, and the tube would have been back but we were able to institute a regime of forcefeeding EBM - not fun, but it did the trick. So many nurses tried different ways to *make* the baby breastfeed that eventually she refused to go near the breast at all.

So, I went home to the more consistent and supportive care of my community team, with a baby who was entirely express-fed with a cup. that meant feeding her every three hours, and then expressing the milk for the next feed - very tiring!

Two weeks after we got home, thre programme of gradual re-introduction to the breast paid off and my baby started breastfeeding. She never went back to the cup, and her weight has shot up to well above average for even a full-term baby.

One real benefit is that in expressing since the first day, I am thoroughly adept at it. Other new nothers have only started in the last few weeks, and it's much harder to get the knack of it at a later stage!

I have produced milk well in excess of my baby's requirements, but, as you say, I am unable to donate it now because of fears abouts HIV and Hep B. But the silly thing is - I was screened for those as part of the routine ante-natal screening! And I'd be happy to take the test again and regularly, rather than see the milk going down the sink

I must have been a very luck lady. When i started breastfeeding, my daughter would not latch on, and after 24 hours.. still nothing. The midwife simply came up to me grabbed a breast and held it to the babies mouth until she latched on.

A bit unortidox but it worked. my daughter started feeding and eventually put on the weight she had lost.
The only problem i found with breast feeding was the fact that my daughter required 1 hour feeds every 1-2 hours, then she screamed like a banshee until i fed her again. I think i managed about 6 weeks before i finally gave up due to exaustion.
This gave me a sense of loss, but as the health visitor and midwives seemed to not want to help me find ways to help myself to continue breats milk.
I live in the U.K (well scotland) and to be honest people are not very tolerant about breast feeding, and i was unable to master the art of discreet feeding LOL

Hi doggy mad!

Well done for keeping going for that long - at least your daughter got the most important bit of milk!

They tried the forcing the baby onto the breast thing with me, but in my case that was part of the problem...Where you in ninewells? It sounds like their sort of technique...

By the way, do you know the h2g2 Parent and Child Group at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A265169 Come along - you'd be very welcome!

Ok how did you know i was in Ninewells? I have to admit i was worried about her doing that
it seemed a bit hard, but i suppose i was lucky it worked.

i know about the parent and child page, i hav popped in from time to time. but i am losing my p.c on monday in-deffinatly so i am trying to cut down, its torture LOL

Your homepage said you lived in Dundee - QED!

I lived in Fife for 6 years, and I got to know Ninewells reputation....

Bummer about the pc - will you be able to log on anywhere else?

lol you are only the second person i have found that even knows where dundee is in britain.
So where do you live now? I have a bush internet box where i
can access internet via t.v but its expensive to use. so i will only be popping in every now and again

Had a nosy around the parent and toddler page, funny thing about it is, at least you can get thrown out of it coz your daughter hits boys with buggys.

Ps what does QED stand for?

I'm in East Lothian now, looking across at Fife over the Forth!

QED is something in Latin that I can't spell without looking it up. I don't know if I used iot right, but I was using it to mean that I was jumping to a conclusion: "If you live in Dundee, chances are you were in Ninewells"

What's happening to your pc access then?

Quod Erat Demonstrandem.

(thus it has been shown, or something)

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

With a u.

H.

Now you see why I didn't attempt it!

telewest st up an e mail link for people who couldnt get h2g2 on their digital tv, well i hated telewest and have just got sskt so i have lost the link

as far as i know it was an official link as bbc only let you have a few live mins access otherwise

I used to live in Dover years ago, i just wish i could get out of dundee its an awful place to live

aand i wish i hadnt asked what qed stands for now lmao

My first born couldn't feed from a breast, so I expressed till I could no longer manage it, then formula fed. My second born was a pro at breastfeeding. Knowing I could express easily, I looked into milk banking. By expressing a little extra each day, spending no more than 10 minutes doing so each day, I donated 30 pints over a period of 9 months to the local special care baby unit. The amount each tiny premature or multiple birth baby needs per feed, meant that that went a very long way.