Go ahead that the term "failure" I just did not like to refer to a breastfeeding that is not established. I could also talk about a failed lactation, an interrupted, abandoned lactation... the fact is that a mother who decides to breastfeed the baby, for whatever reason, does not end up carrying it out (even when it does not mean a failure for her).
This is what happened a few weeks ago when I was in the hospital accompanying my little daughter who was admitted three days. At the pediatric and maternity ward I heard a father of a newborn baby on a couple of occasions talking to the health staff.
In this case, I was the passive witness, but so was the staff who attended the mother and her baby there. And that is more worrisome, because I do not get where they do not call me is more logical (and more if we take into account that I did not know these people at all). But do not do the people who go for help and whose function, among others, is that ... that is another song.
I don't know how the previous conversations were between the mother who had just given birth and the pediatrician that was sent to him when the father said there was no way for the newborn baby to get hooked on his chest. Or the midwife.
I want to believe that, as happened to me (although with some exception on which I will return), they would help you acquire the “technique” or at least reassure it and teach you that it is normal for it to cost at first, that you have to be patient. That with colostrum the baby has enough, that he not only cries out of hunger ...
I don't know if the mother tried hard or little, I don't know the support she had from her family, I don't know how many times they asked for advice or help, I just witnessed one. And the last conversation I had between the same father and the health staff, the next day, no longer demanded help to establish breastfeeding.
Mother wanted they gave him the pill to interrupt the rise of milk, because there was no way for the baby to breastfeed and the milk did not arrive. Maybe they had given him a "help" bottle and the baby was calm for the first time (and the parents too). Maybe they thought about it a lot, maybe a little, maybe there was no bottle in between ... I don't know how it actually happened.
But I would have liked to be one of those professionals (or a good mentor) to talk to the father and tell him not to give up, that it was soon, that there was time, that it is normal for difficulties, and to ask him how the baby was, the problem that there was to take the chest, if he had tried various postures ...
I could have told him about my case (but they had not asked me for it) and how the milk took three days to arrive but in the end it arrived, it was not easy, it hurt and it cost a lot, but it arrived, there were no differences between cesarean delivery and delivery vaginal…
That it is not true that the milk is not going to rise, or that there is little milk as the “popular knowledge” assures, and that it is normal for the baby to want to breastfeed continuously, in fact it is necessary to stimulate production.
But of course, who am I to get into what they don't call me. I would have also liked to tell the nurses, "Come on, you can help him!" before his silence at the request of the father. But they just said they would tell the doctor.
I am sure that I am not who to criticize these professionals because I do not know how the events would happen, neither before nor after (would the midwife or the pediatrician go to see how the mother and her baby were following or would they simply take the pill?). Maybe they had done their best (although that was not the feeling he gave me), but I didn't see it.
Health professionals, pediatricians, are very important in promoting breastfeeding and should also be so when informing mothers who decide to bottle feed, being clear and truthful while being sensitive when transmitting information. It wasn't my homework, it was his.
Therefore be a passive witness to the failure of a lactation It is more serious in your case. Although to me, without dramas, I was stuck with that little thorn, thinking that, just maybe, I could have helped. And reflecting on what will happen in other hospitals when these scenes are repeated day after day.
