Difficulties in Breastfeeding

Difficulties in Breastfeeding

Difficulties in Breastfeeding

Introduction

Breastfeeding support within the community settings has taken a positive step forward since the launch of the Baby friendly initiative (BFI). For this reason, I was able to gain much needed hands on experience with teaching the required skills needed to empower mums to breastfeed their babies successfully. This essay will focus on a particular challenging breastfeeding experience with a lady within the community, discharged from hospital following an emergency caesarean section. Using the Gibbs reflective cycle in an attempt to stimulate personal and professional growth, I will explore the emotional and physical difficulties this women faced surrounding breastfeeding and the care and support I gave. This lady will be referred to as Kelly throughout this essay to ensure confidentially guidelines are met. The essay is reflected on the evaluation of critical incident, natural breastfeeding intuition of mothers, importance of skin to skin contact, latching the baby on, co-sleeping, usage of hands off technique and moral, legal and proficiency aspects of the incident.

Kelly was an educated lady who had expressed her eagerness antenatal to breastfeed her first born child. However, on return from the hospital, she experienced difficulties with getting the baby to latch on and resorted to using a mixture of breast and artificial feeding anticipated to her worrying baby did not have skin to skin contact following birth due to having and emergency c section. She was very emotional about this and had concerns about her breast milk diminishing because of problems in lactation even whilst expressing.

It was both emotional and frustrating for me to see Kelly go through such an emotional cycle of responses, to not being able to provide her baby with what she felt was the best choice of infant feeding. She questioned her abilities as a mother constantly and as a result I privately began questioning my own beliefs of breastfeeding. Was it the best if the bond between mother and the baby was being broken down by physical factors that affected lactation? I would often feel guilty, as a professional trying to promote breast-feeding, it wrong for me to think in this way, was it not? It became necessary for me to explore this incident, opening up opportunities to learn from it and improve practice.

I had so far not seen any women struggling to breastfeed, and had felt confident in suggesting positions and advice, but with Kelly, I admit to feeling a little out of my comfort zone and unable to close the gap between theory and practice. Recognizing the situation for what it was an area outside my limit I took a step back and allowed my mentor to take the lead during the visits. I once again became the observer, and it was because of this that I was able to reflect and analyse the situation more clearly. I watched how my mentor interacted with Kelly, allowed me to see the appropriateness of putting aside any personal judgments in order to break down the barriers to breastfeeding that her mode of delivery had caused.Discussion

Kelly's a major issue was her insufficient milk supply which became a barrier in ...