Breastfeeding of a special child under special circumstances
For children with special needs and their parents, breastfeeding is even more important. Breastfeeding provides you with a higher level of maternal hormones that enhance your intuition and stamina, so that you can meet the needs of your particular child. Due to their physical, psychological and medical merits, breastfeeding for these children is even more important. During our twenty years of medical practice, we have many times encountered the phenomenon to which we glued the term "principle of the level of needs": the child has special needs;parents work out a way to provide their child with care, while raising their level of intuition and insight to the level of their child, in order to match the level of the child's needs. Let's discuss the most common situations in which children with special needs in unusual situations form a special parental care.
A child who was born through cesarean section of
After labor with a surgical procedure for a mother who is about to breast-feed, double work: recover herself and nurse the baby. Here's how to cope with both tasks:
• Ask the nursing home( breastfeeding consultant) to show you the positions for feeding lying on the side and "in the cradle".These positions protect your seam from the weight of the baby.
• Be sure to ask your child's father to see how professionals help you take the right attitude, so that you and your child are comfortable and that you have the right technique of feeding, so that at home he can take a controlling role on himself. Ask the medical staff to instruct your husband how to lower the child's lower jaw and turn the lower jaw outward, because you yourself may be hurt to bend over to see if the baby has taken the breast correctly.
• Take all medications that are needed to relieve pain. The pain reduces the production of milk and does not allow you to work your reflex lactation. These usual medicines for the removal of postoperative pain are safe, since only very small amounts of them enter your breast milk.
• If, due to postoperative complications, breastfeeding is postponed for a day or two, the father or nurse may give the infant an artificial mixture, but preferably not from the bottle. Use a syringe and a method of feeding from a finger is preferable to using a bottle, which can cause the child to confuse the nipple with a pacifier. If you can not yet attach the baby to your chest, you need to start with the breast pump at the earliest possible time, and then your colostrum should be given to the baby.
• The child should begin a joint stay in the same room with
as early as possible. Because of the sedative effect after the use of soothing and anesthetizing agents during the operation, mothers are usually denied co-residence after cesarean section. We still recommend a joint stay, if someone can stay with you and help in caring for the child.
Be patient. To succeed in breastfeeding after surgery, it takes more time, support and perseverance. Part of the energy that would otherwise go to breastfeeding is spent on healing your own body. Harmony in breastfeeding will come, albeit not so easily or quickly.
Preterm Child
These special children have special needs: extra nutrition and increased comfort. That's when the nursing mother manifests itself in all its splendor. Recent advances in neonatal intensive care have increased your chances of taking a healthy child home, but the same technology that saves more children's lives has replaced, by its very definition, the mother. But you are still an indispensable part of the medical team.
Sue and her baby, Jonathan, were a mother and premature baby, whom I observed at the hospital. She spent most of the day at the window of her child's incubator. As participating witness Jonathan's progress, Sue somehow exclaimed: "He seems to be in the outer womb, and I had the opportunity to watch him grow."
Super Milk
A premature baby has an even greater need for human milk. Premature babies require more protein and calories for compensatory growth. The researchers discovered that the milk of mothers who gave birth before the term is richer in protein and more caloric - an obvious proof that the milk of an individual of this species is changing to ensure the survival of the offspring of this species. Super-dairy for premature children - how wonderful!
Most neonatal intensive care units have adhered to the principle of not allowing premature babies to breastfeed until they are able to tolerate bottle-feeding. New research has shown that premature babies actually tolerate breastfeeding much better than bottle feeding, and that the ability to take breasts comes much earlier than the ability to drink from a bottle. The researchers found that during breastfeeding the baby sucks and swallows rhythmically, with pauses, which requires less energy than for less rhythmic sucking from the bottle. It was also found that children who receive breasts actually grow better and they have less episodes of respiratory arrest, and they are less fatigued during breastfeeding than during bottle feeding. Not only breast milk is excellent for preterm infants, but also the way it is served.
What the mother can do
To understand your important role in caring for your premature baby, let's look at a typical case where the breathing of a premature baby is stable, but it is left in the intensive care unit to "podnabir fat".That's what mothers should do to care for their child.
Practice the "kangaroo method". One of the ways that a nursing mother can fit into a medical team is an innovation known as the "kangaroo method"( this affectionate name was given because the method is similar to the specificity of the kangaroo female bearing when a bag is used, and the baby whokangaroos are always born prematurely, easily feed themselves).A study by Dr Gene Cranston Anderson of the University of Florida showed that premature babies receiving care with the "kangaroo method" gain
weight faster, they have less frequent episodes of respiratory arrest and spend less time in hospital.
Using a baby sling bag, the mother wears her skin, dressed in a baby diaper alone, to the skin on her chest or between her breasts. The combination of maternal warm body, warm blankets and maternal clothes provides the child with warmth, since the absence of heat-insulating fat in the child's body leads to the fact that these tiny children easily freeze. The proximity of the maternal breast stimulates the baby to feed when required by his small stomach - this system is called self-regulating feeding. Live at the wall of your child's incubator and sit in a rocking chair with a child, pinned skin to the skin to your chest. If your child does not need to be attached to medical devices, walk around the room carrying a child. The rhythm of your walking is even greater than rocking in a rocking chair, it helps the child to breathe regularly, as, quite understandably, it was to this rhythm that he was used to being in your uterus. The child of the "mother-kangaroo" cries less. Because a loud cry consumes oxygen and energy, it can prevent premature babies from growing at an optimal rate. If you are breastfeeding, take care of the "kangaroo method", hold the baby in your arms and swing the
it, and also carry the child in your bag, it cries less and grows faster.
In addition to the fact that the "kangaroo method" is good for children, it is good for mothers. The proximity of the child lying on the chest, causes an influx of hormones responsible for maternal instinct and milk production. Mothers who have been offered kangaroo care are more likely to breastfeed, they produce more milk and breastfeed longer. They have a deeper attachment to the child, they feel more confident in their maternal abilities and feel themselves to be an important member of the medical brigade of the intensive care unit.
Specialists in the care of newborns are convinced that one reason why the "kangaroo method" helps premature babies develop better is that the mother gives her preterm baby a respiratory rhythm. Early-born children often experience respiratory arrest, called apnea, which slows the growth of these children and prolongs stay in the hospital. You probably never thought of yourself as a respiratory machine, but imagine: a baby snuggled against your chest, and his ear over your heart. You have a rhythm of breathing and a rhythm of heartbeats, and your child feels it. The rhythm of your breathing, your heartbeat, your voice that your child is accustomed to hear in the uterus, and even a warm jet of air coming out of your nose and falling on the baby's scalp with each exhalation, are respiratory stimuli for the child, as if recalling a forgetful premature babyabout the need to breathe. The children attached to their parents adopt the rhythm of their parents.
Express the milk with a breast pump. Hire an electric breast pump and begin to express milk as soon as possible after delivery. Take this milk away for storage and start giving your milk to the baby as soon as he is able to take it for health, in whatever way.
Look for help. Look for the help of a breastfeeding consultant who will show you special techniques that will help your premature baby take breasts correctly and effectively suck.
Beware of the bottle. Instead of giving your premature baby milk from a bottle, use the supplemental feeding system or the method of feeding from a finger from a syringe. Some premature babies do not confuse the nipple with a pacifier and easily pass from the bottle to the breast. Others tend to
to confuse the nipple with a pacifier, so avoid the bottle, unless it is urgently needed for medical reasons. When the child gets strength, go from feeding using the supplementary feeding system directly to a full breastfeeding, bypassing the bottle, or to a combination of breast and bottle - how best for the mother and child.
Invest your baby's chest. Instead of the technique of rapid movement of the hand used to correctly take the breast a child born on time, it is better to put the breast in the mouth of the premature baby. Use the technique of "compress and invest".Holding the hand in the shape of the letter "C"( thumb over the chest, and the remaining fingers under the breast), tightly grasp your breasts beyond the areola. Squeeze the chest, tease the baby's mouth with the nipple so that it opens wide, and gradually put the areola into the child's mouth.
Forget the clock. The schedule makes little sense for full-term children and no for premature babies. Be prepared for the fact that your child will suck weakly, slowly, tire quickly and often fall asleep during feeding.(Similarly, they behave when feeding from a bottle.) Premature babies get tired faster, need more calories for
. Please do not. I'm tired!
It is important not to overwork premature babies, as well as other children with poor health, over-zealous with feeding, otherwise children burn more energy than they receive during feeding, and as a result grow too slowly. Watch for signs that the baby is enough( intermittent sucking movements and drowning in sleep).Take the baby's chest, but be ready in a couple of hours to feed again.
growth compensation and have small tummies. That's why they need small frequent feedings. Premature babies have more strange sleep-awakening cycles, so each mother-child pair needs to make the most of a feeding schedule that ensures that the baby gets the most milk in the stomach without excessive fatigue.