After an extremely busy day at work I was encouraged to see many references
to skin-to-skin care while catching up on my Lactnet posts.  I had been
reflecting on the magic of KMC today.  With mothers and babies returning
from theatre at an amazing pace it is difficult to assist/encourage all with
the first feed.  (Don't ask about our Caesar rate!!)  Babies who weren't
interested in latching or who where bunching or sucking their tongues were
undressed placed skin-to-skin and either self-attached or where encouraged
to do so very easily once I could get back to them.  In one particular
difficult case, it took only 3 minutes of skin-to-skin to have a very
disorganised baby calmly feeding and continuing to do so for about an hour.
Suckling for that long is usually frowned upon on the unit, but today
everyone was too busy to notice!  One "big" baby was saved from receiving a
comp because his blood sugar rose significantly after a prolonged first feed
and skin-to-skin contact.  As Nils Bergman says - if babies are in the right
place (on mother's chest) they do what they are programmed to do -
breastfeed!

Jean Ridler  RN  RM  IBCLC  Cape Town
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