Nurse Your Baby During Painful Procedures
This isn’t news, but I came across another article talking about the analgesic effect of breastfeeding .
For one, it irks me that newborn babies are given the PKU heel stick before they leave the hospital, when the hospital staff is well aware of the fact that the results are completely invalid until the baby has been on protein for 24-48 hours. In other words, if you’re breastfeeding, that would be at around 5 days postpartum (since it generally takes about 3 days for the milk supply to increase from colostrum to mature milk).
Typically, your Pediatrician will do the test again when baby is about a week old. My question, one that should be painfully obvious is: Why do the PKU test on the baby twice, unnecessarily?
From what I’ve read, this isn’t practiced in the UK, where the baby is only pricked at 8 days old… once.
sigh.
At least, if the hospital won’t release you without your baby suffering a needless and painful procedure (another reason to consider homebirth!) , you can present them with information that shows that you can help your baby feel less pain by nursing him during it.
