> It seems that if I am
>simply close by and my breast is bared, my babies can find and then latch
>on on their own.  How close I need to be depends of course on how mobile
>the baby is.  I know that the areola is thought to serve as a sort of
>target for newborns, but how can babies latch on so precisely in complete
>darkness.  I've quite often woken to find my baby has latched herself on,
>without any assistance from me in regards to *aiming*?  It's very rare when
>I feel a latch onto my arm or the wrong part of my breast, and I also don't
>feel the baby rooting around, they always seem to be right on target
>immediately.  How is they are able to do this?

I think they do it by smell.  The most intense "milk" smell will be right at
the tip of the nipple, where the ducts open (I still laugh when I remember
how I thought breasts had just one opening, like a plastic teat on a bottle,
and how surprised I was to see the shower of streams of milk coming out when
my milk first came in and then let-down with a vengeance when I was nursing
my first).

Another reason I think it is smell is that we have a 4 year old cat who has,
over the past year or so, gotten in touch with his "inner kitten" in a big
way.  Sparky likes to put his mouth right on the nipple of any female who
will let him sit in her lap.  He then "kneads" the breast and purrs
extremely loudly, and drools.  He does this through clothes, with no visual
cues or tactile cues to guide him, and gets his mouth right on the end of
nipple first try, every time.  It's *got* to be the smell, even from
no-longer-lactating and never-lactated women, right?  By the way, we don't
encourage this behavior, but he can be very persistent.  He will accept an
*armpit* as an alternative.



Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University