Welcome to the November Carnival of Breastfeeding! This month mothers share their experiences of breastfeeding in the hospital. I rather prefer a home birth myself, so this time I’m leaving the job up to two mothers who wrote to me to share their experiences. At the end of these comments, check out the links to the other carnival participants!

Newborn breastfeeding in the hospital. Photo courtesy of Daquella Manera

Sutter Davis Hospital in Davis, California

Stephanie Cassidy emailed me the following:

I just wanted to say that my experience at Sutter Davis Hospital in Davis, CA was great! They are pro breast feeding and fully support it. The nurses are encouraging and lactation consultants are available to support and educate you. The thing I liked was that if you chose not to breastfeed, use a pacifier, or supplement you have to sign a waiver. So no one is going to give your baby something you do not want them to have. They encourage breastfeeding on their website: “Breastfeeding allows you and your baby to emotionally bond in a special way that cannot be matched, because breastfeeding meets both the nutritional and nurturing needs.”

I love the use of a waiver! It emphasizes the importance of the decision not to breastfeed.

A Not-So-Good Experience

Kelly wrote to share her less-than-ideal interaction with a hospital lactation consultant:

I had my third daughter one year ago yesterday and I am still breastfeeding. I have now breastfed for a total of 5 1/2 years. I LOVED the hospital she was born at. The only bad experience I had was with the lactation consultant. When I got pregnant with my newest addition I was still nursing my almost 2 1/2 year old. I was slowly weaning her off but once I found out I was pregnant I went ahead and called it quits. I never really dried up completely. When I gave birth to my newest little one I had an emergency C-section (yuck) and I wasn’t able to nurse her until about 5 hours after she was born. They had to keep her in the nursery and as soon as I could feel my legs they let me go down to feed her, she latched on perfectly. I got her in the room that night and was able to feed her with no problem. The next afternoon I was already engorged. The lactation consultant came in and I was very open to her being there. I explained to her that this was my third daughter and I breastfed my oldest for two years and my second for 29 months and that my milk never dried up while I was pregnant. My husband hadn’t brought my pump up yet and that I was so engorged that I wanted the pump for a little relief from the pain, so that I wouldn’t get mastitis and so Chloe could eat more comfortably. She basically told me there was no way that my milk was already in and that I shouldn’t pump the milk out. So I then squirted the milk out across the room. I felt like she thought that I no idea what I was talking about. She basically shrugged off everything I said. At least that’s what I felt. Then she told me how I was holding the baby wrong. I was thinking in my head, You know she is making this very stressful. If I hadn’t been so comfortable with breastfeeding she would possibly be making me not to want to do it at all. Breastfeeding is overwhelming enough to have someone like that making you feel like an idiot. Someone else finally brought the pump to me and I did what I need to with no help from her and everything is still fine today. On a positive note, I was surprised to see the diaper bag for breastfeeding mothers. With my other two daughters there where only the formula bags. It’s nice to see that hospitals are more involved in helping mothers breastfeed. That they even have lactation consultants is wonderful I just happened to get someone that thought she knew everything. All I can say to that is everything isn’t written in black and white, there are other circumstances to what she thought was correct, mine was one of those. I’m not saying that every mother will need to pump like I did. I am now going to school to become a nurse and I will then do what is needed to become a lactation consultant.

Kelly, I laughed out loud at the image of you squirting your breast milk across the room to make a point for that lactation consultant! Good for you! Best wishes for your career training — I can tell that your experience will make you a compassionate and helpful LC!

Other Carnival Participants (Stay tuned as links are posted as they come in!)

The Milk Mama: Newborns, Nursing, and Hospital(ity)
Momma’s Angel: My Hospital Experience in Norway
Hobo Mama: Breastfeeding Support: A Tale of Two Hospitals
Whozat: The Nipple Intervention
The Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog: Had a Good or Bad Experience in the Hospital? Tell Them!
BreastfeedingMums: Top Tips for Breastfeeding Success
The Beautiful Letdown: Breastfeeding in the Hospital

Okay, let’s get a couple things straight. I love breastfeeding. I wouldn’t write a blog about breastfeeding if I didn’t think it was a wonderful thing that I hope more people will learn to appreciate too. I also love attachment parenting and keeping my kids close and securely connected with me. I never felt that breastfeeding and attachment parenting kept me tied down at home or prevented me from doing anything I wanted to do — I just took my nursling along with me!
Having said that, I had reached a point where I needed some extended time to myself — …read more

Michigan Representative Rebekah Warren has introduced a new breastfeeding bill, House Bill 5515. HB 5515 would allow a woman to breastfeed anywhere she may otherwise legally be. The law would amend the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act to state in part:
Sec. 302. Except where permitted by law, a person shall not: (a) Deny the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of a place of public accommodation or public service to an individual because of religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, or marital status or to a woman because she is breastfeeding a child.
To …read more

I am almost embarrassed to post this review, but it’s for one of those products that I wonder why I had never heard of it before I stumbled across it on some crunchy blog somewhere. It’s the Naturally Fresh Crystal Deodorant.
Once I became pregnant and then became a nursing mother, I became increasingly concerned about the products I use and the chemicals they contain. This deodorant contains natural mineral salts and ammonium alum and checks out well on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Database. It’s important to note that this product is a deodorant and not an …read more

Becoming a mother made me more frugal and brought me back to basics. Fortunately, play dough is surprisingly easy to make from scratch! I love knowing what’s in it and that it is truly non-toxic, and I love experimenting with different colors and scents! I find homemade dough to be superior to store-bought. It’s smoother, smells better, and can be made in large quantities. The recipe below can be halved if you want to make a small amount of a variety of colors, or it can be doubled to make a gallon-sized bag worth. It takes about 15 minutes to …read more

When I wrote about Five Toddler Sleep Lessons, Rosemary left a question in the comments section:
Interesting to read all your experiences and to see what a common problem this is…I’m in a tough situation so your advice would be helpful.
I’ve co-slept with my son since he was 3 months old, and it has worked great for us. He wakes up to nurse, then falls right back asleep. Neither of us wake up fully, so I’ve been able to have great sleep from from about 12 mos until now (24 mos.)
But over the last 2 weeks his sleep has been terrible. …read more

I recently had the pleasure of working through a review copy of Spanish for Breastfeeding Support by Tanya Lieberman, IBCLC and Diana Glick, MA. The book is a self-guided course to teach you how to support breastfeeding mothers in Spanish. It’s an extremely helpful tool for building effective communication skills. Not only does it provide the necessary grammar and vocabulary for breastfeeding support, it also provides the one thing I have often found lacking in foreign language instruction — conversation skills! All the vocabulary and grammar will not get you very far if you do not feel comfortable actually speaking …read more

The November Carnival of Breastfeeding will focus on “Breastfeeding Experiences in the Hospital.” Did you have a particularly good or bad experience you’d like to share? Do you have tips for choosing a breastfeeding-friendly hospital? Please email me your post by November 16, 2009, for consideration for the blog carnival on November 23, 2009.
As a reminder, here are the guidelines that will increase the chances a post will be selected for inclusion in the carnival:
– A well-written, grammatically correct post
– Thoughtful commentary directly on point for the carnival subject
– Overall quality of the rest of your blog and whether the …read more

It’s the end of a long week of dealing with three children with swine flu a coughing virus some unidentified illness and I need a good diversion. Time to dig through the Google search terms that brought people to Breastfeeding 1-2-3.
1. To the 9 people searching for “Halloween snacks”: My little 15-month-old loved her Halloween snack of breastmilk, thank you for asking. Chocolate is not for my toddler, but it’s okay for nursing moms in moderation. (By the way, I’m not sure about the irony here, but when I gave my toddler her choice of Halloween hand-me-down costumes — a …read more

In accordance with my belief that a new parent’s job is to focus on the baby at the expense of the house if need be, I have developed some shortcuts to getting the cleaning and cooking basics done while maximizing time with the baby. Here are five tips for being as efficient as possible:
1. Wear your baby. Babywearing keeps your baby safe and happy while giving you two hands free to get some work done. If you can master carrying your baby on your back, you can even accomplish some more rigorous cooking and cleaning jobs. Just the other day …read more