Liz, 
Isn't it just amazing what babies can do? When you see it in action, you
know that it is the babies who all want to do this, it's their idea, not
mine, not some intervention that some crazy LC invented. What's totally
astounding is that they ALL do this. And it's so empowering for a mother
when she sees her baby start the search.
I just want to add that there doesn't necessarily have to be a "baby-mad" phase.
I think we are all still learning from the babies.  So we all approach this
from various angles. Those who emphasize the "self-attachment" angle will
watch the babies do the whole thing, from starting the search to final
suckling, pretty much by themselves, the mothers just protecting their
babies from falling. Kittie Frantz shows this beautifully, how incredibly
talented babies are when we just leave them alone.  However, this approach
can certainly see a baby-mad phase, which depending on the baby's
personality or state, the baby may or may not be able to break out of. At
least in my experience.
For me, I view the whole process a little differently, and use the term
"baby-led" because it seems to me to be an interactive process, where baby
leads the way, but mother responds intuitively to her baby's behavior,
because I see the motherbaby as a single psychobiological unit, so the
interaction between them is as important as the baby's own amazing
hardwiring. So that interaction pretty much means no baby-mad phase. Recent
neurological literature tells us that mothers' responsive interactions with
their babies help  the babies organize, and certainly it is a mother's
instinct to want to calm her baby. So to me it is entirely appropriate for a
mother to respond to her baby's behavior, to calm the baby, or even to help
the baby at the last second with this or that that the baby is trying to do.
As long as it is an intuitive unscripted response to the baby's behavior,
and not mom trying to push the baby into something.
Another variation on all of this is Suzanne Colson's Biological Nurturing,
which is wonderful. http://www.biologicalnurturing.com/
This approach emphasizes the idea that others have termed "no gaps" noting
how this continuous ventral contact and being horizontal with the baby
ventral and on all fours really facilitates a lot of the so called primitive
reflexes. For her, the whole process has baby on mom who is lying supine or
at least semi-reclined.
http://www.biologicalnurturing.com/pdf/050MB%20RCN%20press%20release%20(2).pdf
We have a whole lot to learn from the babies, and the more approaches to
looking at what they are teaching us, the more we will learn.
Tina Smillie

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