SIMI VALLEY : Hot Line Can Advise New Nursing Mother

Less than 24 hours after she gave birth, Dena Chovanec of Simi Valley was preparing Thursday to leave the hospital and head home with her son, Connor, a 21-inch-long bundle of joy and raw need.

Chovanec plans to nurse her baby, using the techniques she learned at Simi Valley Hospital to provide her son with all the sustenance he needs for health and life. That thought alone, officials say, can be overwhelming for some new mothers.

“It’s like anything when you’re first learning,” Chovanec said Thursday. “It’s kind of difficult. But we’ll get it.”

And if she doesn’t, there is a hot line she can call 24 hours a day and talk to nurses in the hospital obstetrics unit. For any woman in the community who needs assistance, the hospital offers the Breastfeeding Helpline, at 527-2462, Ext. HELP.

Elisa Hirsch, a nurse and lactation specialist, answers the hot line, providing help and information for any new mother who asks.

“Moms are overwhelmed,” Hirsch said. “They are still in awe of their babies and then they have to learn an essential skill.”

Although it seems that something as natural and ancient as nursing would come as an instinct, it is really a skill that must be learned by both mother and infant, Hirsch said. And with insurance companies dictating that hospital stays run 24 hours or less for uncomplicated births, mothers do not have the luxury of several visits from a helpful nurse as they once did, she said.

Once they are home with their newborns, mothers frequently wonder if they are producing enough milk, if their babies are swallowing, or if they are holding their infants the right way.

Hirsch said more obstetricians and hospitals are now supportive of nursing, a turnaround from the prevailing trend of the 1950s and 1960s when doctors were advising against nursing and in favor of formula.

Hirsch and the hospital nurses are able to help mothers over the telephone.

“But if they have an immediate need, I meet them at the hospital,” she said.

Hirsch also started a support group that meets biweekly at the hospital to help keep nursing mothers nursing.

“We started out with three moms and babies and at the last meeting, there were 21 moms and babies,” she said.