Mary, I found your comments interesting. Positioning and latch are vital because newborn babies have no postural stability in their body without outside support. Postural stability is essential for functional motor activity. This means lousy support equals lousy sucking skills. There are also infant factors that influence sucking skills, two of these are neurologic maturity/health and organization. Neuro health and organization are both decreased in infants who have been exposed to drugs in utero (including labor analgesics), a logical reason for the difficulties we so often see. The other thing that disorganizes infant nervous systems is stress from hunger, loneliness, overstimulation, whatever. This could be why positioning could be more vital for a baby who is fed infrequently, the poor little thing has gotten hungrier and more disorganized than the baby fed frequently, and has less organization to assist their muscle movements, including sucking. So more support is neccessary to assist them... Makes sense to me. -- Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC NYC [log in to unmask]