I've seen it in a two month old baby who had a lot of resistance to being
held in cradle hold.  She was breastfed but not happily or easily.  She did
the whole crawl thing including latching and it was a huge relief for her
mother to see that the baby really did want the breast, just not under what
she felt was pressure.

My hunch is that this instinctive behavior is so important to life itself
that it is latent for a long long time, probably for at least as long as it
is physiologically normal for a child to breastfeed, which would be several
years.  But who's checking?

One reason we may not see it in older babies is that the ones who haven't
figured out latching by the time they are a few weeks old, are unlikely to
continue to be offered the chance to demonstrate it.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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