Breastfeeding

A healthy newborn baby knows how to breastfeed.  He is expecting to spend the first few days lying on his mother’s tummy skin-to-skin.  He knows that if he doesn’t feel right, nine times out of ten, suckling will sort it out.  He instinctively starts to sniff to smell where his comfort is.  The little raised dots on the areola secrete a substance that smells like amniotic fluid - the first thing he ever smelt as he took his first breath and inhaled what was coming off his skin.  He starts opening and closing his mouth to see if the n ipple is close enough and if it isn’t, he starts to bob his head up and down, using his feet to push him up if he needs to move up, and using his hands to move him sideways if he needs to move sideways.  When he finds the n ipple, he comes in chin first, as he will have to reach up for it.  His tongue will come out over his bottom lip.  He will take more of the ‘chin side’ of his mother’s areola into his mouth than the ‘nose side’.  The n ipple will go far into his mouth.  He always takes a good mouthful because everytime he lifts his head and opens his mouth, gravity pulls his head down quickly, before he closes his mouth again.  After a day or two of this, he and his mother start to experiment with other positions.  They both know what it feels like when he’s latched on well and they both know what they’re doing.

For some reason, in our culture, we only allow babies to feed like this for the first feed they do post-birth.  Then mother has to ‘learn’ how to do it sitting up or lying on her side.  Her baby does the same things.  He sniffs and tries to move around when he wants to suckle but he has to wait for his mother to pick him up and undo her clothing so he’s already a bit miffed by the time he gets anywhere near the b reast.  Sometimes he’s already crying and if he’s brought to the b reast with a mouth wide-open from crying, his tongue is up on the roof of his mouth and nowhere near the right place to be able to breastfeed.  His mother is told to hold his head.  This means that he (a) can’t move it around enough and (b) tries to push back against it as he has a strong reflex to flex his neck when the back of his head is touched.  If his mother’s been told to hold him so that his head isn’t being touched, at least he has free movement.  It’s likely she’s been told to hold him ‘nose-to-n ipple’ which is helpful as it makes him have to reach up for the n ipple, but of course he’d be doing that naturally if he were being fed naturally.  His mother’s probably also been told to ‘wait for the gape’ - to wait until his mouth is open wide - and then to bring him onto her b reast swiftly.  Of course mums are not as fast as gravity so usually the baby’s mouth is closing as he reaches the b reast and he only takes a small amount of b reast into his mouth. 

If he is lying on his mother, skin-to-skin, for prolonged periods of time, a baby will snack, very frequently, and doze.  He’ll get plenty of colostrum.  He won’t get too full or too hungry - he’ll be just right the whole time.  If the baby gets put down and only fed when he cries, he’ll get hungry, then full, hungry, then full repeatedly.  It’s unsettling and his heart rate and breathing rate won’t be very stable.  He may not get enough milk to keep his blood sugars up and he may get sleepy and drowzy and his cues to feed will come further and further apart which leads to even lower blood sugars and the risk of dehydration. 

Everytime we interfere with the natural interaction between a mother and her baby, we risk creating problems that can have dire consequences or at least will make the early post-natal period pretty stressful and painful.

Note:  Apologies for writing anatomical words with a space in the middle, but some freaky site has picked up on the post because of the word ‘n ipple’.