I had my daughter in a baby-friendly hospital - but it didn't make any difference. We had the oh so typical experience of each midwife or HCA singing from a different song sheet, of having boob thrust into babe, of going through the motions without really checking see whether she was properly latched.
There wasn't even anywhere suitable to feed - all they had were normal hospital chairs with wooden arms and a backward tilting seat. No footstools, either. And after a section? yeah, I can hold a nine lb baby while sitting up in bed: ouch! DD was very sleepy for the first two days, and showed huge difficulty in latching from the outset, but I was never invited to express my milk or to cup feed. I was never encouraged to wake her, either. I don't think that I ever saw the same midwife or HCA twice.
I wasn't happy that she was feeding properly or even enough. I had had a c-section, and couldn't reach her out of her cot by myself (I'm very short) Yet a midwife told me that I "had no clinical need for a bed" on the basis of seeing DD feed once, and even though I made it clear that I was not happy that she was feeding properly. I was still discharged that day, on the third day after a section. Although it was technically my decision to go home, she made it clear that I would not be regarded as being in need of care if I had decided to stay in. So I went home.
On day six my daughter had lost 2lbs - nearly 20% of her body weight. SHe would have alreay been losing weight while we were in hospital. We were saved from having her taken into SCBU for tube feeding by my mother (a midwife) coming to stay and teaching us to cup feed.
Her tongue tie was not identified until she was three weeks old and I had been expressing, cupfeeding and trying in vain to get her to feed for two weeks.
All of this happened twelve miles up the road from a large teaching hospital where they are experts in working on tongue tie and its effects on infant feeding.
OK, so now we are getting along really well - at 12 weeks she has put on 9 oz a week for the last three weeks, and we felt at 9 weeks that b'feeding had finally been established. However, we were dependent on NCT counsellors, a very good HV and my mum. A combination of volunteers and luck. Why does it have to be this way?
Baby-friendly is not in itself an answer: from our experience, the hospital seemed to think that once they had ticked a few boxes ("skin to skin?" - yep; "rooming in ?" - Yep! "no formula offered?" - yep!) they had done their bit. My community midwife lamented the lack of facilities on the ward, of training, and general lip service paid. And of course, the lack of midwives and use of agency staff also played their role.
Had I seen the same midwife more than once, had somebody skilled really looked at dd trying to feed, had I stayed in longer ... perhaps things could have been different and we could have been spared some of the stress we went through.
Sorry to hijack, but the issue of lip-service being paid to bd instead of real funding being provided where it is needed is a real sore point for us!
Annner