When a baby is born most of the women try to breastfeed their children and, although most leave the hospital breastfeeding their children (80%), there is a large percentage of children who go home drinking artificial milk because it has not been possible to suck properly.
There are even mothers of the aforementioned 80% who when they arrive home end up turning to artificial milk because they have the feeling that their babies are hungry, because they have a hard time breastfeeding or because they already left the hospital with mixed breastfeeding and their babies Each time they want more bottle and less chest.
Faced with such situations The feeling that breastfeeding is a very complicated thing that floats in the environment is only within reach of a privileged and that the fault of the lack of success is either the mother's milk shortage (it has already been shown to be highly unlikely, although not impossible), or the poor suction technique, which causes the baby not to extract properly Milk, which cries a lot, does not gain weight and hurts the mother when she breastfeeds
That's where you ask yourself: “If breastfeeding is natural and the technique and functioning has evolved along with our species,how is it possible that there are so many children who take a bad chest? In fact, if the rest of mammals do not have bottles or lactation consultants, why do they do breastfeeding?
Don't be separated
Once again we must seek the explanation of some of the problems of babies at birth and in hospital protocols. If, for a few years, there is a strong insistence that the healthy baby remain in the abdomen and chest of his mother as soon as he is born for at least an hour (or until he takes the first shot) it is for several reasons and one of them is that breastfeeding success depends a lot on that moment.
In 1990 a study was carried out in Sweden in which it was decided to observe two groups of newborn children. Some were in continuous contact with the mother from the moment they were born and the others were temporarily separated.
The researchers observed that the children of the group that remained in continuous contact with the mother began to move towards twenty minutes, crawling towards the chest and sucking on their own. Between forty and ninety minutes after being born 63% of the children in the group who had not been separated from their mothers neither to wash them, nor to dress them or at all, managed to take the breast by themselves (In this study the effect of analgesia on the mother at the time of breastfeeding was also evaluated, and part of the mothers of this group had given birth under the effects of pethidine, without which a higher success rate would have been achieved) .
When observing the children of the group that had separated from their mothers, it was evident that the children had much more difficulty in trying to take the breast, since only 20% of children got it (again if there had been no anesthetized mothers the results would have been somewhat better), which shows a huge difference in the success of breastfeeding as a protocol or another act is carried out.
How they separated them
The children of the first group remained in the abdomen of their mothers for one or two hours, according to the child, which was the time it took to make the first shot.
The children of the second group, those who were separated, spent 20 minutes in their mother's abdomen as soon as they were born, after which they were washed, weighed, given eye drops and all those techniques that are carried out with the newborns and then they were put back (about forty minutes after being born) naked on the mother's chest.
That little separation of about 20 minutes, which was not even carried out just after birth, was enough for the success rate to drop from 63% to a measly 20%.
Faced with this situation, we all understand why in Spain there are so many children who have not just caught themselves well. When you read "the children were separated from their mothers" think of the procedures that we have seen or suffered so many times when the baby, just after birth, is separated to be cleaned, weighed, measured, medicated and dressed, reaching the arms of his mother spent half an hour, an hour, two hours or even more.
If in Sweden it was only 20 minutes, if everything happened when the baby had already remained in contact with his mother and if they then returned naked to contact his mother's body and that was already cause for failure in the beginning of breastfeeding, How can we expect babies to suck successfully from hospitals whose protocols maintain that the baby must be evaluated as soon as possible?
The oral imprint
Does this study mean that all the children who did not take the breast ended up sucking badly ?, you may ask. The reality is that, obviously, this is not so. Although there is not a satisfactory first shot, exclusive or prolonged breastfeeding can be achieved, that one thing does not have to be taken away from the other, however we must say that to achieve this you have to overcome the first stumbling block (the separation) that, curiously, does not usually be related to a problem of the mother or the child, but with some practices that in most cases can expect.
When babies are born they are willing to breastfeed and the ideal is to take advantage of this characteristic of newborns so that they know their mother's breast and start sucking. If we skip that moment, it is possible that fatigue will be present and babies will fall asleep, skipping a first shot that serves as an oral imprint (Babies tend to "memorize" what comes into their mouths for the first time to see how they have to do to eat and suck) at the risk of something else (a pacifier, a bottle, a finger, a probe, ...) Enter through their mouths and the babies try to make their suction scheme based on what has replaced the chest in a first contact, with the implicit risk that they will not then take the breast well.
It is for this reason that the ideal is for newborns to be treated as babies in the study group who were not separated from their mothers. In this way they will start breastfeeding themselves and the success rate, as there are no elements that confuse them, will be much higher.
Photos | Sebribeiro and Sebribeiro on Flickr
In Babies and more | Good practices in the first hour of life, The importance of non-separation mother-baby, Do not be separated, campaign to promote contact between the newborn and his mother
