Best Practice: Breastfeeding!
A Three-Day Intensive Workshop
Day One
At the end of this session you are able to:
- List two ways to communicate effectively with women about feeding their babies.
- List two birthing routines that may influence breastfeeding success.
- Discuss the rationale of skin to skin care for mother and baby.
- Describe the effects of early nursing care on milk production.
- Describe the basic elements of correct positioning and latch.
- Describe the common patterns of infant behavior in the first 24 hours.
- Identify the specific risks for babies born at 35-39 weeks gestation.
Topics included:
Commitment to breastfeeding
- Why does breastfeeding matter? Making breastfeeding an expectation
- Human milk and the immune system
- Advantages of exclusive breastmilk feeds
- Consequences of mixed feeds
- Species specificity
- Communicating without a turnoff
- Honest education, expectations
- Influence of formula marketing
- Looking at "culture"
- Respect for human biology
- Respect for women and their bodies
Getting Breastfeeding Started
- Evaluating birth practices
- Labor routines
- Medications
- Newborn recovery
- Care That Makes Sense for Good Breastfeeding Outcomes
- Setting the stage
- Skin to skin care and breastfeeding responses
- Postpartum practices and infant outcomes
- Making feeding a priority while ensuring infant and maternal safety
- Prolactin
- Oxytocin – the most potent of female hormones
- When milk "comes in"
- How our care influences milk supply
- On-going milk production
- What about cesarean birth?
- Have we examined practices?
- Tradition versus "best practice"
Expectations of Infant Behaviors in the First Day
- Patterns of feeding
- Stooling and urination
- One breast or two?
- How long to feed
Positioning and Latching Babies at the Breast
- Basis for successful breastfeeding
- Common sense versus "rocket science"
- LATCH score practice
Caring for the Near Term/Supposedly Term Baby
- Lowering the risks through excellent nursing care
- Ensuring adequate milk supply – for the mother, for the baby
- Use of nipple shield
- When does a baby need more than mother's milk from the breast?
- How much?
- What?
- How? Alternative feeding methods