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I remeber shadowing a dietitian at a hospital
years ago for my nutrition degree and she was in a constant embattled state with
the docors and administrators as she attempted to bring the importance of
nutrition to the top of the ward agenda....it was usually a losing battle. Even
in some of the hospital wards many of the long stay chronically ill patients
were actually malnourised and way underweight. I know it's a side issue to the
case of already healthy pregnant women, but the culture rubs off on the whole
place maintaining the general acceptance that the food in hospital is inadequate
to say the least.
Needless to say, the importance of diet is really
crucial to the whole period of pregnancy and postpartum breastfeeding......so
why do so many hospitals still outlaw food in the labour ward...???
I know it's an old point, but it confuses the hell
out of all the parents I teach, especially as they are sometimes told by the
midwife to eat a good meal before they come into hosptial when they phone
into labour ward as they won't be able to eat once they cross the threshold!!
Predictably, this doesn't make alot of sense to the parents and often the last
thing on thier minds is cooking up a meal before they drive off to the labour
room!
ANyway, probably a good time to emphasise the
importance of nutrition generally in pregnancy and Postp. is in the A/N
programme and especially the fact that the woman will probably need to eat MORE
after the birth as the energy requirements from B/F increase, predictably, as
the baby is bigger...although this may not be as obvious to postnatal women (who
are in that hormonally charged foggy brain syndrome anyway!) and often the big
pressure is to lose all that pregnancy weight straight away.
Am I right in thinking that some cultures have a
specific tradition of cooking a highly nutritious meal for the new mother and
feeding her up in that period directly after birth ...(Kitzinger) A far cry from
the tea and piece of toast I got!!
NB(these experiences are told from a UK
perspective!! - any thought on eating in labour in OZ?!)
Steph - CBE SA
(Adelaide)
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