Almost three years ago I launched a question in the form of a post that still has no answer: What is the doctor to whom breastfeeding mothers have to go? And is that if they are wrong, it is difficult to find a doctor who does not associate their ills with breastfeeding ("Are you breastfeeding? Well then surely this happens for breastfeeding ..."), or that does not make erroneous recommendations or issue an unwanted value judgment.
Y if they have a breastfeeding problem, even worse, because no figure is eminently skilled by definition in breastfeeding and in the end does not know whether to go to the pediatrician, his doctor, the gynecologist, the midwife, his nurse or the nurse of the baby.
So it touches a new call of attention to health professionals to put the batteries, and more after learning that when Florence Kirchner she decided not to breastfeed her baby the doctors who treated her they recommended that the breasts be bandaged to prevent the rise of milk.
A story that goes back to the summer of last year
Florencia Kirchner is the daughter of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was president of the Argentine Nation until December of last year, and in August 2015 she gave birth to his daughter Helena Victoria. Although what we have said today happened at that time, it is now when it has been made public, and we have not been able to avoid commenting because the recommendation is totally wrong.
Florencia was a mother having a very clear thing: would not breastfeed your baby. He made that decision and, as we read in News of the Week, he defended it because he did not have to act as a mother in this way:
I always knew that I didn't want to give the tit, it made a lot of impression on me, and they judged me a lot. It seems good to me that breastfeeding is promoted. But to affirm that to give the tit is the best thing of you is to sentence the women. Everyone talks about the wonder of nature, but nobody talks about side b, and that is also naturalized.
Your decision is obviously completely respectable. They judged her by her decision and that is something that should never happen (you can dissent, you can say, but respect should never be lost because every mother has to be free to make the decision she considers best for her baby, for her and for the entire family).
And doctors recommended bandaging her breasts
Florencia Kirchner, victim of the erroneous advice of professionals Now, leaving aside his decision, which is not the issue we want to deal with, the recommendation he received to make formula feeding possible was wrong. The doctors told him that what he had to do to prevent his breasts from filling with milk was to perform a technique called "breast bandage".
The technique is to press the breasts with a bandage so that the available space is limited so that there is production and arrival of fluid to the breasts (and I say liquid because when a woman reaches the rise of milk the breasts will be They get hard and congested, although milk production is still very low: it is the normal edema of some glands that are preparing to start feeding the baby).
A priori it may seem that it makes some sense, that of pressing the breasts so as not to leave room for milk production. However, it is a mistake that is quite dangerous because the rise (or fall) of milk on the third or fourth day occurs yes or yes, and if there is no space what can happen is that the milk and edema ends up doing a lot of damage
If the milk that begins to be created has no place to stay, where it can be located in the mammary gland waiting to be extracted, it can be retained in various areas producing obstructions (Like when you squeeze a water balloon with your hand and the balloon expands with the water and goes out where it can, between the fingers of your hand: leave it tight, keep filling the water balloon and wait to see what happens).
But in the breasts there are no areas that can burst like a balloon does to let the liquid out, and what happens is that the areas with retained milk, under pressure, begin to swell, engulf and if this is not resolved it they produce hard and painful lumps, the redness of the area and that the mother begins to have fever and discomfort as a result of a mastitis.
Come on, that bandaging the breasts is an ideal tip if what you want is cause a high risk of a mother suffering an infection of her mammary glands. An infection that, if not resolved, can lead to an abscess in the chest that must be drained to remove all pus caused as a result of that infection.
And what to do if you don't want to breastfeed?
Then take the pills of hormones that exist for that purpose: they modify the maternal hormones by decreasing those that aim to create milk so that it does not occur, and in case there is some discomfort in the chest, extract a little until it leaves to annoy In a few days, the inconvenience ceases without the need to carry out advice that could be considered from past centuries.
Therefore we need, and especially mothers, health professionals who know about breastfeeding. Because this time the baby was not going to be breastfed equally, but the mother was at unnecessary risk, but sometimes she and the baby are at risk, and often even breastfeeding.
Photos | iStock, Clarin
In Babies and more | No, bandaging your breasts to lower milk production is not a good idea, Weaning (I): clarifying the concept, Weaning (II): when it is the son who decides, Weaning (III): when is the mother who decides
