Hospitals are those health centers where one enters sick with the intention of going out with the highest level of health possible, unless you are a breastfed baby. And I say less, because in that case there are many hospitals that seem to have among their guidelines that of try to spoil breastfeeding putting all possible obstacles to the mother.
Faced with this situation, which we will now detail a little more, the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) has published a magnificent triptych, brief and concise, for inform mothers what are your rights, what are the rights of your babies and children, and for report the same to hospital professionals, which often act without any bad intention, but getting carried away by what has always been done (when practically all babies took a bottle), which could be very negative in the current situation, when most breastfeed.
How will a hospital do its best to spoil breastfeeding?
Obviously not the purpose. Nobody tells you "since you enter it, we are going to get you to leave your chest", but with its operation and with the difficulties that come to cause in family dynamics they end up getting it from bouncing.
A few months ago we told you the postpartum of a mother who had to stay to take care of her baby sleeping in a sack. She was discharged after childbirth but not her daughter, who had to stay a few more days, and instead of making things easier they made it difficult. He had nowhere to stay with her, they told him to take the milk out and then the nurses give it to the girl at night and that if what was taken out was not enough they would already give him artificial milk.
That is, a mother initiating a breastfeeding on demand whose advice is to pump the milk to give it to a bottle and do mixed breastfeeding, all for not allowing her to be with her baby. If this is not to hinder breastfeeding, they will tell me.
Well, the same happens in many hospitals in the Spanish state, and probably in the world, on a daily basis. Babies or children who are breastfed, who are cared for much of the day by their mothers, who at the time of having to enter they are forced into a separation that neither they want nor their mothers either. And many times it does not matter if the mother says that she can spend the hours that are needed, is that they do not leave her, although that is the best for the baby, all because it is still functioning as if the baby could stay in the care of the nurses, who every three hours they can give you a bottle of artificial milk.
It is a children's right
We must always be clear about this: when we defend the accompaniment of our children, we do not do it because it is our right, but also because it's a children's right. This has been made clear by the AEP in the triptych by emphasizing how complicated it is for a family to enter a child, and more if they are being breastfed, because the food is received from the mother, and on demand.
As he defends the European Charter of Hospitalized Children, which dates back to 1986: "If the baby needs to be hospitalized, the mother should be able to enter with him or at least stay with her child for twenty-four hours."
It is health for the baby or child
That admission of the mother, or its availability, would allow her to breastfeed when the baby was hungry, on demand, and also in many other situations: a hospital is not a known environment for a child and they usually perceive it as a threat: people They take care of him, they prick him, they test him, they separate him from his mother, they hurt him and he is not able to understand why.
In such a stressful situation, it is vital that the baby can be with his mother because, as I say, he will not only breastfeed when he is hungry, but every time someone approaches him. And far from being a problem, as many professionals say ("if you put it to the tit I can not"), in many interventions it is a benefit because the child is calmer and because "tetanalgesia" works by reducing the pain of the intervention.
On the other hand, mothers who breastfeed have an advantage that they know well: in a situation of sickness, children often refuse to eat practically everything except breast. It may not be so in all cases, but when they are not well, they see the food and feel that "uff, now eat?", The chest does not usually reject it because they do not see it as such: they see mom, not food. They see a hug, not food. And being ill they recover sooner if they eat and are better hydrated.
It is a matter of respect
Finally, it remains to be said that I believe that it should be the main point, which is precisely the one that is most forgotten, or to which less importance is given from these health institutions: it is a matter of respect. The child has a health problem, and his usual diet is the chest: Breastfeeding. When parents go to a hospital with a child, it is because they trust the care they will receive and because they require care that cannot be carried out at home. But the baby is still yours, and consequently they are the ones who have to decide what and how to eat at all times (unless it is something negative).
In other words, just as when a child's diet is adapted for religious reasons, the babies' diet has to be adapted for family reasons: if a baby breastfeeds and his mother wants to breastfeed, he has to be able to. The hospital people are no one to change that decision of the mother, and less for reasons of internal organization. The child belongs to the parents, always.
