Parents have many things to consider about their child. One of the important considerations that parents must make is whether to bottle feed or to breastfed their infant. Most parents will do whatever it takes to keep their child healthy. Evidently, several studies shown that breastfeeding help decrease the infection rate of the infant. But, for the mothers to successfully breastfed their child, they need education about the proper way of doing it especially those infants with special needs.
Infants are not immunized until 2 months old except for the hepatitis B that can be given at birth that leads to their vulnerability and an increase risk of contracting infection such as acute gastroenteritis (AGE) (Bonig …show more content…
The institution must have a lactation specialist that will make time to teach the mothers the proper way of doing it and ways of storing it. In a research study “Healthcare providers’ perceptions of breastfeeding peer counselors in the neonatal intensive care unit” by Rossman, Engstrom and Meier that focused on whether peer counselor interventions contribute to increased breastfeeding rates in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) department. Mothers of infants hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) needs lactation care which is highly specialized and labor intensive (Rossman, Engstrom, & Meier, 2012, p. 460). For a successful lactation, several barriers might be encountered for these mothers as compared to mothers who had a healthy term infants (Rossman et al., 2012, p. 460). Because of immaturity or illness, most infants in the NICU were not able to ingest feedings at the breast, so the mothers must make a way to maintain lactation by using a breast pump that could be the only option for weeks or even months (Rossman et al., 2012, p. 461). Several studies revealed that healthcare professionals do not have adequate knowledge and skills to assist mothers with the most common lactation-related problems (Rossman et al., 2012, p. 461). And due to the critically ill infants needs of care, health care professionals prioritize