Most expectant Mothers who intend to breastfeed their newborns are aware that giving birth in the hospital runs the risk of having your baby get a bottle of sugar water (aka “baby crack”) by a well intentioned but seriously misguided nurse, perhaps to pacify a fussy baby in order to let Mom sleep.Â
Another reason a newborn may be given sugar water is for “pain management” when the baby receives the synthetic K injection, Hep B shot or newborn screening tests involving a heel prick.
Besides the fact that this sugar water contains glucose derived from genetically modified (GMO) corn, giving a baby an artificial nipple before breastfeeding is established is a great threat to the future breastfeeding relationship between Mom and baby.
As a result, clued in Moms are now advised to include a “no sugar water” clause in their birth plans, with doulas and other birthing advocates remaining watchful while Mom is resting or baby is out of the room for whatever reason.
Now, there is a new game in town that is commonly being used to derail breastfeeding after a hospital birth and arbitrarily give GMO laced commercial formula to babies.
This reason is neonatal hypoglycemia or low blood sugar.
I first became aware of this problem when a friend sent me an email about it. She had been made aware of the situation by a doula from New Mexico who said that women who start off breastfeeding in the hospital are being told by the nurses that their babies have low blood sugar and they need to have formula right away. This misguided advice caused a large number of mothers to stop breastfeeding out of concern that neonatal hypoglycemia might cause harm such as brain damage.
So what’s the truth? Do babies ever need formula instead of rich, immune system boosting colostrum in the hours and days after birth due to blood sugar problems?
The short answer is a resounding NO! Â Before I thoroughly debunk the egregious practice of using low blood sugar as an excuse to give newborns GMO commercial formula, let’s go over the causes, symptoms and problems associated with the condition.
What Causes Low Blood Sugar in Newborns?
It is true that babies can suffer from hypoglycemia or low blood sugar after birth. Â Babies are at increased risk for hypoglycemia if any of the following conditions were present:
- The baby was premature, had a serious infection, or needed oxygen right after delivery.
- Mom has gestational diabetes.
- The baby suffers from hypothyroidism or has a rare genetic disorder.
- The baby experienced poor growth in the womb during pregnancy.
- The baby is smaller in size for gestational age.
Symptoms of neonatal hypoglycemia include:
- Bluish-colored or pale skin
- Breathing problems, such as pauses in breathing (apnea), rapid breathing, or a grunting sound
- Irritability or listlessness
- Loose or floppy muscles
- Poor feeding or vomiting
- Problems keeping the baby warm
- Tremors, shakiness, sweating, or seizures
It is important to note that neonatal hypoglycemia may sometimes be present with no symptoms at all.
Is Low Blood Sugar in Newborns Dangerous?
Low blood sugar can indeed be a problem for newborns if severe or persistent as it can affect the baby’s mental function. Rarely, brain damage, heart failure or seizures can occur.
Unfortunately, fear of lawsuits has generated an irrational fear of neonatal hypoglycemia that has resulted in the widespread acceptance by hospital staff that breastfeeding mothers should be separated from their babies with newborns given supplemental formula in the hours and days after birth.
This hyper fear is causing even full term, normal weight babies to be given the painful test for low blood sugar when they don’t need it and many of those to be given formula when it isn’t warranted.
Formula feeding to babies by hospital staff gives new mothers the mistaken and very wrong impression that formula is medicine and good for the baby. It also causes many breastfeeding Moms to lose faith in their ability to properly nourish their children with their own colostrum and milk which interrupts and frequently ends the breastfeeding relationship for good right at the time when baby needs it most!
No Accepted Level for Neonatal Low Blood Sugar
The fact is that there is no generally accepted level that indicates baby has low blood sugar. According to the International Breastfeeding Center, the blood sugar levels required in many hospitals border on absurd with 3.4 mmol/L (60 mg %) routinely considered the lowest acceptable blood sugar.
There is no evidence to back up such a level as the lowest acceptable blood sugar concentration.
In addition, there is no reliable method for accurately measuring blood sugar outside a lab environment. Â The use of paper strips is not reliable as they tend to underestimate the true value. Â Truly accurate measures are obtained only by the laboratory which are able to provide a reliable measure of plasma glucose or sugar.
Hospitals Testing for Low Blood Sugar at the Wrong Time
Another problem is that many babies are tested for low blood sugar right after birth and then an hour later with formula being immediately and arbitrarily given if the blood sugar has dropped – even for normal weight, healthy, term babies!
This is totally inappropriate as research has shown that it is normal for the blood sugar in a neonate to drop in the first hour or two after birth! Â Moreover, a newborn’s blood sugar will naturally rise after the initial drop in the hours after birth – even if the baby is not fed!
Colostrum is Superior to Formula to Treat and Prevent Low Blood Sugar
A little bit of colostrum such as what a newborn would receive from Mom in the first hours after birth maintains blood sugar better than a lot of formula. Babies that are being breastfed have much higher levels of ketone bodies in their blood than formula fed babies or breastfed babies given formula supplements (Pediatrics Vol. 109 No. 3 March 2002, pp. e42). Ketone bodies are highly protective of the baby’s brain.
In addition, babies have been shown to maintain blood sugar better when skin to skin contact with the mother occurs such as would happen with breastfeeding.
If colostrum is superior to formula in maintaining healthy blood sugar levels in a newborn why then are breastfeeding mothers being encouraged by misinformed hospital staff to supplement with GMO laced commercial formula in order to treat an arbitrary condition like neonatal low blood sugar where the required blood sugar concentration is not even scientifically proven as accurate?
Simply criminal isn’t it?
What to Do if Low Blood Sugar Truly is an Issue
Suppose the rare case presents itself where an exclusively breastfed baby truly does have blood sugar levels that are dropping too rapidly or are too low? Â In those situations, mothers and birth advocates should request that the baby be given banked breastmilk, ideally fed with a Lact-Aid, and not formula. Â According to the International Breastfeeding Center, every postpartum unit should have banked breastmilk ready and available on site.
The second best option as an alternative to formula is to give the baby an intravenous infusion of glucose rather than formula by mouth.
Whether banked breastmilk or a glucose IV is given, the baby should continue to breastfeed as usual with no interruption!
Be on your guard, breastfeeding Moms as the low blood sugar excuse may be used on you to derail your breastfeeding efforts in the hospital!  Make sure appropriate action for dealing with this hospital scenario is clearly outlined in your birth plan.  Better yet, skip the hospital and have your baby at home or at a birth center instead and avoid the whole problem from the get go!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources:
The same thing happened to me. I had gestational diabetes and my son’s blood sugar was low. I did BF in the delivery room but they took him to the NICU and gave him bottles. I wanted to pump and give him breastmilk but the nurses were not very happy. I stayed in the NICU and they eventually let me BF him and pump.
I have been a baby nurse for over 16 years (well baby and NICU), and have never ever given a baby sugar water. The hospitals I work at don’t even carry it because of its risks. It was eliminated from our facilities over 10 years ago. Babies aren’t supposed to have free water because it will mess up the electrolyte balance. For painful procedures we use drops of sucrose, but it is never given for low blood sugar. We have an algorithm for checking blood sugars on neonates. If baby is full term, healthy, and suffered no complications during birth, then a sugar is never checked unless they become symptomatic (as above). We routinely check sugars on at-risk babies who meet certain criteria, similar to those above. Per regular QC checks, our bedside glucose machines are consistently accurate within 2-3% (both high and low) of a lab glucose specimen. But no matter what, we always always promote breastfeeding and do what we can to make it as successful as possible. We have banked breastmilk for NICU and SCN use, but at $200 per 6 oz., limited quantities from the supplier, and difficulty in getting insurance companies to pay for it, we have stringent criteria for it’s use (prematurity, inborn errors of metabolism, short gut syndrome, etc.) and cannot stock it in well baby areas.
As healthcare professionals, we don’t just go shoving bottles of sugar water or formula in babies mouths, and we are certainly NOT criminals. Like Mamie said, if you simply communicate with your medical team, you will find that we are quite supportive and will carry out your wishes to the best of our abilities. We too follow the international breastfeeding guidelines, and many of our lactation specialists are members of the LaLeche League.
This happened with my youngest son 7 years ago and he was given some test and just slightly below what they wanted him to be at and convincing us that he needed the sugar water. I always wonder if that contributed to his problems as he did have difficulty with nursing, where I had to supplement and try to train him to suck more vigorously with the “boob tube”. He later developed yeast infections and that may have contributed to his autism, with the toxins his body was having to deal with. I’m not saying it was the cause, but it may have contributed to some degree. I didn’t learn of the importance of healthy gut flora until his autism diagnosis and starting him on the GAPS diet at 3 years of age.
We are still doing what we can to help him recover and my gut feeling at the time was “no” he didn’t need it but I was uninformed and didn’t know any better…about a lot…I’m so grateful for your posts and getting the information out to others. I frequently pass along your posts and this is another that I will pass along. Thank you!
Another, perhaps similar, issue I encountered was that my son was a big baby (9 lbs, 3 oz) born in February in Canada and had jaundice (so we didn’t have the option to sit in the sun as we had with my daughter, a June baby). I was given the option to feed him formula, (because it was processed quicker and helped breastfed babies reduce the amount of bilirubin quicker) or put him under the blue lights. We did the blue lights.
Thanks for the info! I hadn’t heard about this yet since my first child was born 5 years ago. Now that I’m having another, I will keep this in mind when preparing my birth plan. I only wish I could use a birth center! Unfortunately, I am of an extremely small build (inside) and need a C-section. But I breastfed the first and plan to again with my next. Thanks again!
My daughter was actually born with a genetic disorder that causes her to be hypoglycemic (at 7 yo she still has blood sugar crashes and even seizures). I never gave her formula and her doctors never suggested that I should. She was in the children’s hospital for a month after birth with IV sugar and my pumped milk fed through an ng tube. It was (and still is, at times) a very scary situation but it would never occur to me that feeding her a less healthy food would be a good solution to her problem. Instead, we have always focused on making sure that her nutrition is the best and most well balanced. Then there was that pediatric endocrinologist that suggested when she was three that since we had to feed her every 4 hours to prevent her blood sugar from dropping, all the extra calories would cause her to be obese which would lead to type 2 diabetes…and that would be a good solution to her hypoglycemia. Needless to say, we never went back to that bozo.
I am due in dec, and haven’t had a baby in seven years. I would love to see an example of a birth plan, reflective of the opinions of this site/article. If anyone knows of a good example please post a link…. Or better yet, Sarah I would love to see what you would put in one if you were going to be having another baby.
Thanks to all!
Michelle, I would love to help you with a birth plan, if you’re unable to find one. I’m a student doula right now, working on my certification. 🙂 Shoot me an e-mail, if you’d like! walindeman at gmail dot com
Oh wow, thank you so much! I will email you!!!
(Smartphone challenges aside) As soon as mom was in her room they overdressed the baby and brought him in. We immediately stripped him to his diaper and put him on mom’s chest. Soon he was nursing likea champ and was one month old yesterday. I am proud of my kids and happy that they trusted me enough to let me fight by their side.
Sarah,
So glad to have found your blog. Just joined, and got this email. Just had to share my story.
I am a mother of 6. When I was pregnant with my second they tested me for gestational diabetes. They did this by loading me up on sugar to confirm. I was oblivious to everything at this point. From then on I refused this test, and they went along with it as long as I would let them mark my record as if I tested positive for diabetes. When I was pregnant with #4, I wised up and joined a Bradley class. What a Godsend! I learned about birth plans. I learned that there is no risk to the baby if you breastfeed right away. I had 6 healthy babies and the last 5 were all like 9 lbs something, and I’m little. They say this diabetes can lead to high birth weight. I had all my babies in the hospital, and we had to fight like mad to get them to accept my birth plan once I established it for the last 3. Thanks to my husband, we did.
Because the babies were so big they were always wanting to induce my labor. The gestation period back then was 40 weeks. My babies always came at 41 by design. Now I think they changed it to 38! I took the easy way out the last time and adjusted the date on record of my last period. Not truthful, but look who we were dealing with. They should go by conception anyway, seems to me. So #6 was born within their happy range 🙂
Have your babies at home if you can!
Thanks Sarah, and keep up the good work!
This story caught my eye because it happened to me. My son was born via c-section after 4 1/2 hours of pushing, weighing in at 9 lbs 9 1/2 oz. Because of his size they checked his blood sugar and discovered it was really low (I think in the low teens). My husband remembers them telling him about the need for a bottle, but he said it didn’t seem like he had much of a choice. Unfortunately, our son failed the second test (39 and it needed to be 40) so they gave him another bottle and kept him in the nursery awhile longer. One I woke up after a little nap I made my husband go get him and there was no way they were taking him back! I was concerned about him having nipple confusion, but we ended up nursing very successfully and had no problems getting started. I was determined to make it work and he was a great nurser. He’s still nursing at 20 months. Now that I’m aware of this happening I will definitely be on my toes about it for our next baby.
The same thing happened with my son’s new baby last month. Mom was still in recovery after her c section and the staff basically bullied the kids into accepting the formula feeding. Afterward, we read an article on the La Leche League website that said not only that many doctors accept blood sugar levels 10 units lower than our baby’s, but that stress like leaving the baby naked under warming lights instead of bundling them can cause that stress, which is the way they had him for over an hour after he was born while they were finishing mom’s surgery and then keeping her in post op. I had had to encourage dad to keep his hand on the baby, which helpeda little
Babies are naked under warming lights because they warm up faster. It’s not to be cruel; evidence based practice shows that being naked under a warmer is more effective.