Dear Friends:
    Gill Rapley, the midwife who administers the Baby  Friendly Hospital 
Initiative in the UK, did a fabulous presentation about this  at the International 
Conference in Orlando, Florida last month.
    She pointed out that babies are born able to feed  themselves, via 
self-attachment. And most 2 year olds can feed themselves. So  why do mothers go 
through such a difficult process of feeding babies at all,  much less on some 
arbitrary schedule? She has some lovely videos of babies  feeding themselves; her 
presentation is warm and funny and absolutely  accurate.
    Babies watch, and then grab. A breastfed baby can  eat anything it wants, 
because it has been twice exposed to the proteins from  the mothers' diet; 
first, via the amniotic fluid that it drinks, and second, via  the changing 
flavors of the milk. 
    Babies need to feed on cue, at their pace. We teach  mothers not to watch 
the clock; we need to be teaching them not to watch the  calendar either.
    warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE
Maternal-Child Adjunct  Faculty Union Institute and University
Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human  Lactation
Support the WHO Code and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth  Initiative

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