When you got pregnant, you took care to choose a prenatal health care provider or team of providers that you could trust to provide the best care for you and your baby throughout your pregnancy. As the time for baby’s arrival draws near, you may be faced with another major health care decision – where to give birth. For example, you may be working with midwives and preparing for a home birth until something happens late in the pregnancy which requires that your care be transferred to a hospital. That just happened to me. You could also be planning to deliver at a specific hospital or birthing center only to find out that your baby will be arriving earlier than that facility is allowed to deliver them. For example, the hospital near my house can not deliver any baby less than 37 weeks because they do not have a NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). In both situations, there may be more than one option available for where to give birth so you will have to make an informed decision.
When you are faced with such a big decision, it can be hard to decide which factors are most important. In light of my recent experience, I would suggest that if you have the time to do so, you compare the policies and rules of each potential birth location regarding the things that are most important to you. For some people, that may be the look of the rooms or the visiting hours and policies. For me, if I were to have to make such a decision again, one thing I would want to know is the hospital’s policy regarding the feeding of newborn babies.
I realized that this was important a couple of days after my son was born. During labor and delivery, a variety of strong medications were circulating through my body through my IV. Some of those medications are known to suppress lactation. I also ended up having a c-section, and that can also affect lactation. Although it appeared that Blake was feeding well, he lost a lot of weight very quickly and I was required to supplement him with formula. I am very dedicated to breastfeeding, and to the nutrition that breast milk provides. If my own milk was not nourishing him enough, I wanted to supplement him with another woman’s breast milk, not formula. When I asked the lactation consultant if that were possible, she nearly burst into tears. She explained that if we were upstairs in the NICU, a prescription for human milk supplementation could be written for him, but no human milk was available to infants in the regular maternity ward. She has been trying to get that policy changed for a while but to no avail. I had to give Blake some formula for a couple of days, and I was upset about that. As soon as my milk came in I was able to stop supplementing but I still wish I had known to investigate some of the hospital’s policies before I chose to deliver there.
Photo by click on morguefile.com.