What needs to be done to establish and preserve the mother's own milk supply for preterm newborns admitted to the neonatal inpatient area?

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.

- In the inpatient area where the baby is receiving care:
• Teach how to express and/or pump milk manually.
• Teach decongestive massage prior to milk expression.
• Provision and care of pump for milk expression, supplies required for collection, labeling, and storage of milk.
• Skin-to-skin contact as early, frequently and long as possible, as permitted by the newborns’ clinical condition.