Lactation education: New mothers interested in breast-feeding offered supply bags filled with information, goodies

by Alyssa Harvey, The Daily News, originally published on 7/30/2011

When Nichole McIntosh gave birth to her daughter, Ellyson, on Wednesday, she knew she wanted to breast-feed.

The Bowling Green woman had successfully breast-fed her son, Eli, who is now 5, for about six months.

“He was born four weeks early. He was not as good an eater,” she said as she nursed Ellyson in her room at The Medical Center on Thursday. “I know a lot more this time. I have more information. Breast-feeding is more common now.”

BabyNet – a local group that provides education about preconception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, breast-feeding and parenting – and Women, Infants and Children, a national supplemental food program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, want to make sure moms such as McIntosh get all the information they need by providing bags with breast-feeding supplies and information.

“Formula companies have historically given out discharge bags with a can of formula,” said Dana Bennett, a registered dietitian and certified lactation consultant at the Allen County Health Department and regional breast-feeding promotion coordinator for the state. “The problem is that even the presence of any kind of artificial nipples undermines breast-feeding success.”

The bags have been helpful to the moms, said Marilyn Thomas, a lactation consultant at The Medical Center, which had a 64 percent breast-feeding initiation rate for June.

“We’ve had some moms who are offered a bag from a formula company and they state that they’re not going to use that,” she said. “This helps them.”

McIntosh said the bag is really nice.

“I like that it has the video,” she said. “There’s a book where you can keep track of feeding times. When you’re up all night long, you forget the last time you fed the baby.”

Bennett said 125 bags have been done in the Barren River Area Development District, mostly at The Medical Center.

“They have been well-received,” she said. “The lactation consultants have been great about encouraging (the nurses) to give the bags.”

The bags – which come in pink, blue and yellow – are given to mothers who are exclusively breast-feeding before they are discharged from the hospital. They contain a coordinating changing pad, swaddle blanket, breast-feeding book, washable breast pads, a breast-feeding log and the video “Breastfeeding: You Can Do It!”

“It’s filled with things we thought would be of value to breast-feeding moms,” Bennett said. “With the DVD, they can see pictures of how the babies latch on.”

The bags also have a card on which mothers can write an evaluation of the bag. Those who fill them out receive a T-shirt for the baby that reads, “I eat at mom’s.” They can also submit evaluations at the BabyNet website, babynetky.net.

“We’re hoping to get some feedback from around the state,” Bennett said.

Bennett has also been supplying reusable, washable canvas bags with the international breast-feeding logo at southcentral Kentucky farmers markets to raise more awareness for World Breastfeeding Week, which starts Monday and continues through Aug. 7. The bags will be handed out to the public at Bowling Green-Warren County Farmers Market, Southern Kentucky Farmers Market and Community Farmers Market Bowling Green on Aug. 6.

“Vendors put the produce in them,” she said.

Various health organizations – including the American Academy of Pediatrics – support breast-feeding. At its website at www.aap.org, the organization recommends exclusively breast-feeding for about the first six months and supports breast-feeding for the first year and beyond as long as mutually desired by mother and child.

Studies have shown that benefits of breast-feeding include reducing the risk of various illnesses, enhancing brain development and developing stronger facial muscles for the baby and, in mothers, reducing the risk for breast and ovarian cancer and helping them get back to their pre-pregnancy weight quicker.

“Formula is much harder for the baby to digest,” Bennett said. “Breast milk is perfectly designed for baby. They only eat until they are full and then they stop.”

Copyright 2011 News Publishing LLC (Bowling Green, KY)

Adventures in baby-sitting: Clinic teaches basic care and first aid

by Alyssa Harvey, The Daily News, originally published on 7/23/2011

Baby Tiffany was having a tough day.

She had already had her diaper changed and been revived with CPR. Now she was being saved from choking.

“Has anyone ever had to deal with a choking infant?” asked Andrea Norris, a registered dietitian and community wellness manager at The Medical Center’s Health and Wellness Center at Greenwood Mall. “(They can choke on) the smallest things. They can put things in their mouths.”

It’s all in a day’s work for Baby Tiffany, a baby-sized CPR mannequin used at a recent Baby-sitting Clinic at the Health and Wellness Center. The class is designed to teach youths ages 11 to 17 about safety and how to handle emergency situations as well as tips on caring for children of all ages.

“It gives them knowledge on how to be not just a baby sitter, but a good baby sitter,” Norris said. “They learn infant and child CPR, fire safety, first aid, poison control, how to market themselves, bathing, feeding, who to answer the door for and how to answer the phone.”

When Norris asked the participants if they had dealt with a choking infant, a couple of youngsters out of the 22 in the group raised their hands. Norris then gave them first-aid instructions.

“Support her head,” Norris said as she placed her hand under and around Baby Tiffany’s jawline. “Angle her head down on your forearm.”

Norris then used her palm to firmly hit Baby Tiffany five times between her shoulder blades and then, supporting the back of her head, turned her face up and switched her to her other forearm.

“Do five chest compressions using your fingers,” she said, using two fingers to press at the center of Baby Tiffany’s breastbone.

After learning different first-aid techniques, the students formed a line to practice on Baby Tiffany. At one point, they changed her diaper, wiping down to prevent infection and using two fingers in the waistband of the diaper so that they wouldn’t fasten it too tight.

It’s one of several things that 11-year-old Faith McMillin of Franklin found particularly useful.

“I learned what to do in a fire, not to do homework while I’m baby-sitting and to stay close by while they’re sleeping,” she said. “I’ve been baby-sitting my little cousin and I wanted to know what to do if something happened.”

Ashton Brown, 13, of Lexington, was in Bowling Green visiting family and decided to take the class.

“My mom always tells me that I’m good with kids,” she said. “She told me I needed to take a baby-sitting class.”

Ashton also has experience in baby-sitting.

“I did one of those ‘mom’s helper’ things. She had four kids, all under 7,” she said. “I took the older kids. We played outside.”

Ashton said she learned a lot at the Baby-sitting Clinic.

“It’s nice,” she said. “I liked it.”

Copyright 2011 News Publishing LLC (Bowling Green, KY)

Herbal incense: Legal but dangerous. Many looking for marijuana alternative are smoking potpourri product, which isn’t made for human consumption

by Deborah Highland, The Daily News, originally published on 7/17/2011

Two hits into an herbal incense packaged as 7H, and Amy, a University of Kentucky sophomore home for the summer here, loses complete awareness that she has a body.

Her eyes close and she sees static, like the kind of static on a television screen when the cable goes out. But this static hurts.

Amy wants the static to go away because the pain is unbearable. At one point she stops breathing because not inhaling clears the static somewhat and makes the pain go away.

Amy is having what some drug users call a “bad trip,” the kind of trip that in Amy’s case ended with an ambulance ride to the emergency room at The Medical Center.

Amy, whose name was changed for this story, agreed to speak anonymously to the Daily News to warn other young people about the dangers of smoking incense.

A clerk at Prince Hookah Lounge, where Amy bought the 7H, says it is one of his best sellers. The clerk points out to a buyer that the $25 product is “potpourri” and is not for human consumption. It sits behind a clear plastic display case along with other incense such as Crazy Monkey.

Prince Hookah Lounge owner Amar Shoraba said his customers were clamoring to get their hands on 7H. As a businessman, he wants to sell what consumers are looking to buy. But he points out that he would not sell 7H for any amount of money if a customer said he was buying the product to smoke it.

“Nobody can smoke that stuff,” Shoraba said. “It’s herbal incense. People are not supposed to smoke it.”

Much like with paint or glue, which are manufactured for specific purposes but sometimes used as inhalants by people looking for a high, many people looking for a cheap, legal alternative to pot are smoking 7H.

Amy, a pre-med student who tried marijuana on a visit to Amsterdam, where the substance is bought, sold and used legally, thought 7H would produce a similar feeling.

She was wrong.

“When my trip started, I closed my eyes, and then all of a sudden everything that had happened before, I had forgotten it all. I forgot that everything existed. I couldn’t remember who I was,” she said.

“It was like I was created in that moment and nothing else had ever happened before. I started seeing white dots like static. That’s all I saw. I wasn’t really aware that I had a body. I tried to look through the static. When I stopped focusing, it started feeling like a sharp pain.”

Amy started making sounds.

“When I made a note, the static would change like I dropped a pebble into a lake,” Amy said.

When Amy’s mother found her making the noise, it was screams. Then she noticed that Amy appeared to have stopped breathing. Amy’s mother called for an ambulance. Amy spent the next several hours in a hospital bed. Her feelings cycled from pain, to confusion to paranoia. She then spent the next several days feeling paranoid and unsure if the things around her were real. Nearly two weeks later, Amy still experiences some fear that if she closes her eyes, the static will return.

Amy is one of several patients to come through the emergency room at The Medical Center after smoking “incense.”

“We’ve had several cases lately, particularly younger individuals, under the influence of some sort of incense or bath salts,” said Dr. Bart Spurlin, director of the emergency department at the hospital. “They’re hallucinating, paranoid, acting erratically. As far as I know, there have not been any deaths at our facility due to it. But I have heard and read about other cases where there have been.”

Spurlin can’t say for certain that his recent emergency room patients were under the influence specifically of 7H unless someone tells him. And because no one knows what exactly is in the incense, it’s difficult to treat patients who react to it after smoking it.

“It’s frustrating on our behalf,” Spurlin said. “It’s not like treating someone under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. In this case, we don’t really know (what the substance is). We have to treat symptoms as they arise and monitor labs and vital signs.

“When we call Poison Control, they will tell us they don’t know either,” Spurlin said.

Mitch Plumlee III, a behavioral health specialist at Park Place Recovery Center, expressed similar concerns with 7H and other incense.

“One of the troubles with these drugs is they are having some strange effects, and we’re not always clear what specific chemicals are in them that are causing these effects. The chemicals vary from brand to brand and obviously, it’s not regulated.

“Nobody knows the long-term side effects because it hasn’t been around,” he said.

The packaging on 7H lists several ingredients that it does not contain – recently banned chemicals found in synthetic marijuana. The packaging refers to the product as “potpourri” and states that it is 100 percent legal in all 50 states. However, the packaging does not say what’s inside or where it is made.

That’s troubling to Bowling Green-Warren County Drug Task Force Director Tommy Loving, who said his agency isn’t sure if 7H is legal because they don’t know what’s in it.

“After receiving complaints about it and hearing of emergency room visits attributed to it, we have purchased the product and sent it to the state police lab for testing,” Loving said. “It’s not clear to us if it’s one of the new designer drugs made illegal by the past legislature.

“We need to be able to say what this product contains, and then once we know that, we would probably proceed one of two routes. One, if it is an illegal substance, then we can make an arrest for the sale of it. If it is not an illegal substance but creates the problems we’re hearing about, then we would work with the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy to have this declared as an illegal substance.”

For Amy, she thought legal meant safe.

“I knew that it was legal, so I figured it would be OK,” Amy said.

While Amy’s medical providers told her she was never near death, her blood pressure and potassium levels dropped after she smoked 7H in a tobacco pipe. For a period of time while she was still under the influence of the incense, she said she was wishing that she didn’t exist while at the same time believing that she was nothing but a thought without a body.

Amy said she will never smoke 7H again, and she has warned her friends about it.

“Just because these substances are legal doesn’t mean that they are safe or nontoxic,” Spurlin said. “I would recommend as a doctor that you not ingest or smoke any substance that is not specifically for human consumption.

“If anyone knows or discovers a friend or relative who has ingested any of these substances or is abusing them, they should seek medical help.”

Copyright 2011 News Publishing LLC (Bowling Green, KY)