To establish lactation when an extremely premature birth occurs, it is important:
1) Manually expressing colostrum, within the first three hours after birth, initiates the milk production process and has several benefits:
- It empties the mammary gland which, together with the action of the hormones that promote labor and delivery, are a powerful stimulus to initiate milk production.
Regarding the administration of feeding the premature newborns in intensive care areas, the written breastfeeding policy should explicit issues related to the:
In gestations with high risk of prematurity or potentially needing admission to the Neonatal Care Unit, prenatal admission is an opportunity for communication with the pregnant women.
Evidence-based counseling about the benefits of human milk feeding is a public health intervention that improves breastfeeding rates. Repeated prenatal informational interviews are more effective than isolated interventions and should be documented in the medical record.
When a child is born prematurely, some things are important to initiate and sustain the mother’s milk production:
- In the birthing area:
• Immediate, direct and continuous skin-to-skin contact, whenever clinically possible.
• Extraction of colostrum for administration into the newborn’s oropharynx.