Hi Lindsey, I realize that a bit of time has passed since this article was written, but this can serve as a bit of an update. I am a postpartum nurse, breastfed my baby, had a completely natural labor and delivery at TMH, so I am definitely very encouraging, supportive and almost pushy toward being a baby friendly/breastfeeding friendly hospital. TMH (I hear) is beginning changes soon (within the next few months) to delay baths for many hours after delivery and to bring the entire admission process (weights/measurements, medications) to the mother's bedside once she is upstairs on the family care unit which is usually at least 2 hours after delivery. This should allow more bonding time for mom and baby downstairs after delivery. There has also been a huge push for some time now to ensure babies are placed skin to skin immediately after birth and latched (correctly!) as soon as possible. There is still work to be done and sadly it cannot all happen fast enough for my liking, but I am hearing good things are coming, so please keep up the awareness, and women keep pushing (no pun intended) for the things we know are good and right for us and our babies. Thanks again for helping to make the changes we so desperately need!

I am a nursing student and just did my rotation in Labor and Delivery and Mother Baby. I can tell you that TMH teaches their nursing students to promote breast feeding with the caveat of respecting the mother's choice of course. There is no nursery available so rooming in is a must. Nurses are to encourage skin to skin and breastfeeding within an hour of birth. Our Nursery nurse usually does not come to the room for about an hour for bath and weight check etc. You are always going to have nurses who are not as capable or as supportive, it is just the way of things, we don't always communicate on the same levels. In regards to weight loss, I am afraid that this goes back to our litigious society, if a baby loses too much weight- yes it is normal to lose up to 10% of their body weight and to incur some breastfeeding jaundice, but unfortunately there are circumstances in which a baby can get very sick in a short amount of time due to issues unrelated to breastfeeding that cause similar symptoms and the hospital policy is to CYA. The best thing we can do is to make sure women are informed before going to the hospital and lobby for more LC's (longer hours, we don't all give birth M-F 8am-5pm). Doulas are also an awesome advocate for laboring women/new moms.

I had my first baby at TMH in 2008, it was an overall beautiful birth, a natural one supported by my doula Lindsey and my husband. It feels kindof weird writing this on your blog Lindsey b/c I know you know all this. :-) I had a VERY rough start with breastfeeding, it hurt bad. Like, REALLY bad. I would call the nurse and she would stick my boob in my baby's mouth and then be on her way, not knowing how to explain to me what I was doing wrong. The LC came in once, I guess she was pretty busy. We were never encouraged to give her formula, but I did leave the hospital with open wounds on my nipples (and a big diaper bag full of formula samples). A few weeks later I was back in the hospital with a severe case of mastitis and had to have minor surgery and two days of iv antibiotics to get better. I feel like if TMH had more staff dedicated to helping women establish breastfeeding all of this would not have happened to me.

TMH has beautiful, BEAUTIFUL labor and delivery rooms. I mean, if you want to have a natural birth there they have all the components. With a few exceptions though they lack staff education and support (shout-out to labor nurse Alicia, lactation consultant Heidi, and Dr. McAlpin, who were very supportive of my choices).

i gave birth to my daughter at TMH in 2010, and knew going into it that i definitely wanted to exclusively breastfeed her from the start. i received my first LC visit only hours after the delivery, and when i expressed dismay at being too exhausted to follow most of what she was teaching me, she assured me that she would be back the following day to go over it all again. true to her word, she did come back the next day, and the day after that one as well. and thank goodness for her, because in the meantime, my milk was slow to come in, my colostrum bolus ran low, and my baby lost several ounces. i've since learned that the weight loss was probably more a matter of fluid loss, since i'd been induced and given epidurals, eventually leading to a c-section, but had no way of knowing that at the time, and found myself being harassed by nurses wielding formula bottles and threatening that my daughter would be kept behind after my discharge if she didn't gain some of those ounces back. luckily, i was able to get away without the formula ever making it into the baby, but it was terrible being so unnecessarily stressed out about the situation. i was also frowned upon by nurses for letting my baby sleep on my chest instead of in her little plastic baby box, and shown how to use the dreaded breast pump very incorrectly by a nurse before being set straight during the next LC visit. so, overall, i wasn't much impressed with the mother-baby nursing staff. the LC was fantastic, however, and just based on three visits from her during my stay, i was able to continue nursing at home without any major difficulties and am still nursing her to this day, 17 months later, with no plans to stop in our near future.

i now live in asheville, north carolina, a city which prides itself on being very progressive and green and so forth. however, based on the experiences of some of my friends who have given birth at our local hospital in the past year, i have to say TMH did a better job preparing me for breastfeeding than what the norm is here. LC's are in such short supply that most new moms don't get a single visit until just before they're due to check out and go home, and in many cases have already been pressured into supplementing by the nursing staff.

even though i won't be having any more babies at TMH, i'd love to see it qualify as "baby-friendly" - i'd love to see ALL hospitals qualify as such, and the sooner the better! :)

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