My Nursing Plan
Nursing Your BEST
Your Nursing Plan
Your nursing plan helps your family and health care providers understand your feeding goals and how you want to experience nursing your baby.
Create Your Plan
Work with your partner to fill out this nursing plan. It will help you set your nursing goals and help your health care team understand what you need during and after delivery. When it is complete, share it with your health care provider and anyone assisting with your birth.
Exclusive Nursing
My goal is to exclusively nurse my baby. Please do not give my baby any supplements before speaking to me or my birthing partner. I need all of my baby’s suckling to be at my chest in order for me to establish a good milk supply.
Skin-to-Skin
When my baby is born, I would like to have infant placed on my chest, skin-to-skin with me for the first hour. If possible, please perform routine newborn evaluations with my baby on my chest. Throughout our stay, I want to be able to hold my baby skin-to-skin as much as possible. A blanket may be placed over us, but not between us, if extra warmth is necessary.
Routine Exams
Please examine my baby in my presence and do not take infant away from me unless baby requires medical treatment that cannot be done in my room.
Rooming In
I would like to room in with my baby 24 hours a day to give my baby plenty of skin-to-skin time and so I can learn my baby’s feeding cues and feed at the first sign of hunger. If for some reason my baby and I are not in the same room, please bring baby to me at the earliest hunger cues, such as sucking on hands, making sucking noises or rooting.
Pumps
If my baby is unable to nurse or is separated from me due to medical reasons, I want to be able to use a breast pump within 2-6 hours of delivery. If you think I am going to need a pump longer than my hospital stay or if there is not a double electric breast pump available, please remind me to call my WIC office or health care plan for a pump.
No Bottles or Pacifiers
Please do not give my baby artificial nipples including pacifiers or any types of bottles filled with human milk substitute, water, or glucose water. If there is a medical reason for supplementation, I would first like to speak with a lactation consultant or pediatrician about trying alternate feeding methods with expressed human milk.
First Hour
Please help me start nursing within 30-minutes to 1-hour of delivery. This means placing my baby skin-to-skin as soon as possible after birth and offering to help to begin nursing when my baby seems ready (e.g. rooting, licking lips, etc.). Please do not force my baby to nurse if not showing signs of readiness. Instead, keep my baby skin-to-skin with me until baby is ready to try to latch.
Emergency Cesarean
If I have a cesarean, I would like to hold my baby skin-to-skin as soon as possible after the operation. If I am unable to for some time after the delivery, then please allow my partner to hold my baby skin-to-skin.
Assistance with Nursing My Baby
Please teach me how to get a good latch and how to correct my baby’s positioning and latch if it is needed. Please teach me how to know my baby’s early hunger cues and how to tell if my baby is nursing well.
Support After Birth with Nursing
I would like to receive contact information for support in case I need help with nursing after my baby and I are at home. Remind me to make appointments to follow up with WIC and my baby’s care provider.
Discharge Bags (for hospital birth)
Please do not give me a free gift bag containing human milk substitute or show me any promotional or marketing materials concerning human milk substitute.
Pack Your Plan!
If birthing in a hospital, don’t forget to take your Nursing Plan with you! Ask the staff to attach your plan to your chart while you’re still in labor so they will be aware of what you want. The plan will make sure that all the members of your medical team are up to speed about your preferences.