I am late in thanking Lucia Jenkins for her earlier September post (find it
in the Lactnet archives for first week in Sept - 1 Sep 2004 September #29 Lucia
[[log in to unmask]] wrote under the subject heading:  Kathy Freeman: Re:
latch and baggage

I also want to thank Diane Wiessinger for her presentation this spring in
Massachusetts.

Lucia gave us an excellent description of positioning and latch.  It really
does enable one to see this clearly.  Thank you. :-)

Except for the first part about the indented breast -- which I, too, have
often taught moms to use with the asymmetric latch "now indent your breast with
your index finger way down away from your nipple" -- the positioning part Lucia
described sounds so similar to Rebecca Glover's in her video Follow Me Mum
which I have now purchased. Diane Wiessinger presented Rebecca's concepts at
this spring's LLL of Massachusetts, RI, and VT conference.

I love that similar ideas about positioning and latch spring up all over the
world at around the same time.  It reminds me of the invention of generation
of or uses of electricity. Once an idea emerges (I first read about the
asymmetric latch in the early 90s in BESTFEEDING: Getting Breastfeeding Right for
You) and as we 'get it' we each add a piece to it improving on it.

In Glover's video she demonstrates the similar oblique position of the baby's
body and the tilting back of the baby's head.  But instead of indenting the
breast as you and I do, she has the mother bring the baby's chin solidly into
the breast below the areola, and at the same time has the mother put a finger
above the nipple (parallel to the baby's lip) where the baby's nose will end up
and traction upward on the skin which points the nipple upward.  Then as the
baby's mouth continues to open wider and the upper lip comes in closer to the
breast approaching the nipple, the mother reverses her finger and quickly
guides (almost pops) the nipple into the baby's mouth.

I've had a chance to teach this latch more than ten times now and one
experienced mother who'd had one of her previous babies with tongue-tie -- and this
one is also -- exclaimed how wonderful it was to get so much breast in the
baby's mouth and that it didn't hurt. Another excitedly said, "He's never had this
much breast in his mouth before!"

One thing I particularly like about it is the mother does not have to hold
her breast at all. It works well with different types of nipples, both flat
and/or large. Sometimes a mother can't quite manage it and I go back to the
"indent your breast...."  But it's great to have more choice in our repertoire of
asymmetric latch.

Mardrey Swenson IBCLC

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