Do I have any legal right to breastfeed in hospital?

[NAR4]

I have recieved a date for surgery to get my downstairs repaired, following the birth of my last child. My baby is 4 months old and fully breastfed. He refuses to drink from a bottle or a cup and just screams until he can be fed by me. I have been trying to arrange for my husband to be able to bring the baby to me, in hospital, for his feeds. I have checked that it is safe to do so after an anesthetic (drugs in breastmilk helpline, BfN) and it is. The hospital have refused on the grounds that other patients might find it offensive.

Do I have any legal right to be able to feed my child? The hospital have said if he is hungry he would take the bottle. I don't believe this at all and am finding the whole thing really stressfull. The operation is booked for 1st July.

Any knowledge or help would be greatly appreciated.

Name and shame the hospital!

What about the drugs for surgery? Have you checked if it's actually safe to bf? You may need to "pump and dump".

This sounds totally wrong. Your baby is 4mo, too early to be weaned and ebf. He needs you to feed him. You have a legal right to feed anywhere, so long as it is not a dangerous place to do so.

I agree, get the relevant info, print it out and challenge them, go as high up the hospital as you can. If no joy, go to the press.

There's never any need to pump and dump. Breast milk doesn't work like that. Sometimes (e.g. with a lot of alcohol) you may need to wait a while before feeding though.

I had DS1 with me most of the time when I was in hospital when he was a baby. They organised a side room so we could have some privacy (you have curtains on a ward, anyhow, so what's to be "offended" about?)

I have checked the safety of the drugs with the 'drugs in breastmilk helpline' run by the BfN. It is safe to feed once I have woken up from the anesthetic.

I am going to keep chasing this up, right up until I go in. I'm sure like others have said, if I can just speak to the right person, it will be fine. My biggest concern is not getting 'permission' from them but that my husband will actually be able to get access to me.

I am going to search through the hospital web site and find who I should be speaking to about this, as I don't see why anyone should be able to tell me I can't feed my baby. I just need the hospitals co-operation with either helping me get off the ward for the feeds or allowing my husband to bring baby onto the ward.

Good luck with chasing this up, NAR, and I hope you get them to back down. They are being extremely unreasonable, and they are adding to the stress of preparing for surgery.

I used to be an operating theatre nurse, and I can see no reason why you should not be allowed to breast feed. If it were your baby having surgery, then 1) your baby would be allowed on the award, with no nonsense about cross infection and 2) you would have to feed your baby.

I would also say that cross infection is not an issue, provided everyone is following the correct procedures - hand washing, using anti-bac gel, etc. simply bringing a baby onto a ward is not going to mean bacteria will spray off the baby, coating the whole of the ward in a fine layer of germs! Frankly, the only people who will need to touch the baby are you and your dh, and the three of you will share bacterial flora anyway, so ther is little risk to you. If no-one else touches the baby, and if you don't go flinging used nappies around the place, then I cannot see how the baby would pose a risk to anyone else.

I wonder if other people on the ward maybe having a termination and a baby on the ward would be likely to upset them.

Not that that excuses it; arrangements should be made so you can feed your baby.

Would it be an idea to get your gp on side?

Hi NAR Sorry to hear you are having a hard time. I would kick up a stink as it is totally unreasonable for them not to support you bf the baby.

I would contact everyone including hospital management and when you find the right person have them give you permission in writing (make sure you bring it with you). If the hospital don't come around within a week I would go to a lawyer and have them send a legal letter. It shouldn't be too expensive and you might find someone on here who could help you out pro bono.

SDT Here in the US my sister was put on the infant ward and there were other mothers there with newborns (younger than 4 months corrected age) who were in having operations. The hospital did this because babies have weaker immune systems and the cleaning procedures are different for that part of the hospital compared to the regular womans ward. It was done to protect the babies, not the mothers.

It may be an infection control or health and safety issue? It may be simply that they cannot have babies on the ward because they are not equipped to deal with them. Personly i would put it off unless it was urgent (cant imagine down below surgery is urgent!)

Don't take any nonsense OP, I know in my hospital we do anything we could to help support a BFing mother having surgery.
The draft letter an earlier lawyer poster supplied looked very good.

I suspect that if the hospital's legal department knew that you had been told this they would be absolutely livid.

It's a clear breach of the Equalities Act and possibly even the HRA. Send the letter posted by fuckwittery earlier in the thread to the consultant, the ward sister and the chief executive. I think you will see some rapid backpedalling.

Solomn-Why would you think gynae surgery wouldn't be urgent?

Sounds rather ridiculous.

But if there are curtains around you can't see it would be a problem so no one could be offended.

I think they can get around it by saying they provide a breast feeding so you can't feed on the wards. (Had a similar issue at another hospital visiting my dad).

Could you wait until a slot is available at the NHS hospital as this may have better facilities to accommodate you? Ie ping your surgery via the the gyny or maternity wards rather than on a day surgery unit?

I had similar problems when my dd was 3 months but it was resolved by them allocating a small side room for me to bf in as they didn't want a baby on the ward for my baby's safety more than anything. I suppose it depends though if you're able to physically walk to a side room after your surgery?

Some good advice here for a barking policy.
I wonder if it might slightly help your case if instead of blanketly saying you need to feed your baby, providing a tiny bit more detail as actually we are talking about what? Three sessions, every three or four hours? I know that it is the principle which is wrong and of course you should be able to feed baby as much as you like. But in terms of convincing fuckwits, it might help to spell out that you're talking about only about an hour tops of feeds (or whatever it is). That makes them look even sillier. (And of course there is no need to stick to it on the day if baby wants something different of course!!)
I really hope you get a good outcome to this.

Is there any way of postponing the surgery, as others suggest? I think I will be in a similar position after DC2 is born as I will need surgery for my prolapse. I wasn't planning to have the surgery until DC2 was 1, although this is mostly because of the recovery time needed.

Just wanted to let you know that I had to go into hospital to have my gall bladder removed when DS2 was 10 weeks and EBF. I had a side room, Ds stayed with me until I went down to theatre and after was bought in for feed by DH. The anaesthetist was made aware and changed some of the analgesia. Was in for 3 days.

Take it to the press, your local paper should be interested and inform the press office of the NHS trust who is paying for the treatment that you are doing that.
The primary care trust or clinical commissioning group as they might be by now, is paying for your treatment and will not want the bad publicity.
Or you could insist on being treated in an NHS hospital - there is a right to patient choice after all.

Thank you everyone.

Also to the private message, who for some reason I can't message back, I was thinking of trying what you did. If all else fails, just discharge myself asap.

fuckwittery will be phoning chief executive officer and legal director tomorrow to try and get somewhere. If that fails, deliver the letters. Don't want to push it more than that as ultimately I don't want the op postponed.

Good luck op. I am sure this added stress is the last thing you need at this time.

Spoke to the General Manager of the hospital yesterday. She was very understanding and has said my dh can stay all day with my baby and also come and go as he wants, in the night. The only restriction is dh and baby cannot sleep at the hospital if I need to stay in, due to insurance.

Really pleased with the outcome. Thank you everyone, without you I wouldn't of gone to the General Manager.