The HealthEast hospital system has received national certification for breast-feeding support.
Zane
Khouli was born at 12:15 p.m. Thursday with a full head of brown hair.
Immediately afterward, before getting weighed or tested, Zane rested
against his mother’s chest.
“We’ve
been waiting for nine months for this moment,” said Zane’s mother,
Michele Khouli, of Woodbury. “We didn’t want to take that away.”
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Zane was
born at Woodwinds Hospital in Woodbury, which is making a concerted
effort to ensure that mothers like Michele Khouli have direct,
“skin-to-skin” contact with their newborns and immediately begin
breast-feeding.
The new
practices and emphasis on breast-feeding education are a result of
HealthEast’s two-year process to receive national certification as a
“baby-friendly” birth facility, which required 20 hours of education for
all nurses and a minimum of three training hours for each of the 400
providers, said Carol Busman, clinical nurse specialist for the
HealthEast Maternity Care Center.
The
system’s three hospitals — Woodwinds, St. Joseph’s in St. Paul, and St.
John’s in Maplewood — were officially certified last week under the
Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, a program sponsored by the World
Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund. Only 7.6
percent of hospitals in the country have the certification, and
HealthEast is Minnesota’s first systemwide, baby-friendly hospital
group.
One of the
driving forces for HealthEast’s certification was improving exclusive
breast-feeding rates for new mothers, said Jeanette Schwartz, Woodwinds
maternity clinical director. Although 90 percent of mothers at
HealthEast were initiating breast-feeding after delivering, only about
40 percent were exclusively breast-feeding once they left the hospital.
Nurses and doctors were giving out too many formula supplements to
newborns, Schwartz said, a habit practiced by many providers in the
state.
“When
you’re saying breast-feed and you’re giving formula samples, it’s
incongruent,” said Mary Johnson, breast-feeding coordinator for the
Minnesota Department of Health’s Women, Infants and Children Program.
If a
newborn shows a medical need to take supplemental formula, HealthEast
providers now urge mothers to use a cup or a spoon that doesn’t confuse
the baby with a nipple.
The hospital also has purchased human donor breast milk from an accredited milk bank in Ohio, Schwartz said.
But
because of improved breast-feeding rates, babies need less formula and
less milk, reducing costs for hospitals. Almost 60 percent of mothers at
HealthEast now breast-feed exclusively at three months, and almost 50
percent at six months.
Statewide call to action
The new
HealthEast certification reflects a larger statewide effort to promote
healthier maternity practices — boosted in August for National
Breastfeeding Month. State Health Commissioner Dr. Ed Ehlinger is
sending letters to hospital executives calling on them to promote
optimal maternity care and consistent breast-feeding by implementing 10
steps identified by the World Health Organization.
The steps
include providing staff training, helping mothers initiate and continue
to breast-feed, and keeping mothers and infants together 24 hours a day.
Hennepin
County Medical Center has been working toward its own baby-friendly
certification, and since the beginning of its program has increased the
percentage of mothers exclusively breast-feeding in the hospital from 24
percent to 62 percent, said Dana Barr, a family medicine staff
physician at the HCMC Richfield Clinic. Mayo Clinic Health System-Austin
in Austin, Minn., and the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital
in Minneapolis also received the certification in 2011 and 2012,
respectively. Regions Hospital in St. Paul also is seeking its
certification.
Minnesota
is ranked 20th nationally for maternity practices, and only 23.5 percent
of Minnesota mothers exclusively breast-feed at six months, according
to the Centers for Disease Control’s Breast Feeding Report Card,
released July 31. “I’d certainly like to see us higher,” Johnson said.
Breast-feeding
is associated with decreased risk for infant illness and mortality.
Recent studies estimate that if 90 percent of women breast-fed
exclusively to 6 months, and up to a year or more with complementary
foods, the country could save $13 billion in annual health care costs.
A better start
For
HealthEast mothers, the baby-friendly designation is not just about
breast-feeding — it’s about creating a better initial connection with
their baby.
Melissa
Scalia, of Blaine, delivered her third baby, son Isaac, by Caesarean
section at St. John’s Hospital five months ago. Afterward, she felt
immediately more relaxed than she had in her first two deliveries, she
said. This was the first time she was able to have immediate
skin-to-skin contact, as part of HealthEast’s initiative.
Instead of
keeping Scalia’s arms strapped after her operation, the nurses,
obstetrician and anesthesiologist used their training to position Isaac
next to his mother. Isaac has begun breast-feeding quicker and better
than Scalia’s previous children, in part thanks to the initial contact
on her chest.
“It was the first time I was actually able to hold one of my kids right away,” Scalia said.
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