Nikki Lee Health

I just got home from an international breastfeeding conference in Orlando, Florida, sponsored by Healthy Children’s Center for Breastfeeding. http://www.healthychildren.cc/conferences3.htm   One of the wonderful features of this conference are the researchers, who come from all over the world to talk about their latest discoveries. This year, we were blessed with the presence of Ann Marie Widstrom Ph.D and  Kristin Svensson Ph.D. Both of these wonderful women are midwives, clinicians as well as scientists; they focus on skin to skin care and its impact on hormones, behavior, and breastfeeding. They are modern goddesses of science and clinical expertise.

Dr. Svensson spoke about a study that she and her colleagues published about the Effects of Skin-to-Skin Contact on Severe Latch-On Problems in Infants During the First Months after Birth (currently under review for publication in the International Breastfeeding Journal (http://www.internationalbreastfeedingjournal.com).  It is a severe latch-on problem when a baby won’t breastfeed, but will scream, push the breast away, freeze, panic, or get angry when brought to breast. This is demoralizing to mothers, and can lead to premature weaning. Other women seek help from a breastfeeding therapist.

Some of the contributing factors that lead to a baby refusing the breast are that the mother received epidural analgesia in labor, that she gave birth via cesarean section, that she and her baby were separated from each other after birth, that the first breastfeeding was delayed for hours, that the baby received non-human milks (aka infant formula) by bottle, and when the baby was ” ‘helped’ by staff to be attached to the breast with ‘hands-on-intervention’.”

As with all good studies, there were two groups of mothers and babies. One group received practical advice and encouragement during the initial visit; the other group received skin-to-skin contact along with practical advice and encouragement during the initial. Mothers were encouraged to go home and practice; all mothers and babies received both a 1-week visit and a 4-month visit with the breastfeeding helper.

While there is much to learn from this study, and much that I have not described in this blog post, the outstanding fact is that the mothers who used skin-to-skin contact as part of their breastfeeding therapy were regularly breastfeeding by 2 weeks after the initial visit. Dyads who used the practical advice and received encouragement took 4.7 weeks to achieve regular breastfeeding, over twice as long.

Skin-to-skin contact is my favorite way to start a visit with a new mother and baby. I want to see what their relationship is like, and create a safe and relaxing environment for craniosacral therapy (if that is used) and for breastfeeding recovery. I love seeing excellent research validate what I have already seen.

Thank you Dr Svensson, and your colleagues: M. Velandia, AS Mattiesen, B Welles-Nyström, and AM Widström!