Babies and mother should not be separated.  If they are together skin to 
skin from birth on, they usually nurse at least once in first 2 hours then 
go into a deep sleep for hours.  Remain skin to skin and mom will begin to 
recognize cues.  Of course if baby is across the room, swaddled in a baby 
box or down the hall in a nursery, mom won't get the cues.

If mother and baby are separated the whole picture gets out of focus and BF 
becomes harder.

Lawrence states that " Data confirm the view that delivery room or birthing 
center protocols that intercept interaction and suckling between mother and 
infant also have a negative impact on long-term lactation success."  She has 
a great section on Nursing at delivery, pg 272. with ref.

BF Answer Book   has good info , page 26-28. " Righard and Alade (1990) 
found that in addition to the effects of labor medication, separating mother 
and baby before first nursing also resulted in sucking problems when mother 
and baby were reunited to nurse, even though the separation was only 20 
minutes long."
Also gives other ref on Separation, pg 27.

Riordan discusses Early Feedings on page 186 and has a table of 1st day 
sleep patterns on pg 187.  "Newborns spend 64% of their time sleeping 
(Sadeh, Dark & Vohr, 1996).  When access to the mother is not restricted 
after birth, the breastfeeding neonate exhibits a sleep pattern similar to 
that illustrated in figure 7-1."
Infant state                   Time period
Alert                            Birth-2 hours
Light and deep sleep    2-20+ hours
Increasing
wakefulness  *             20-24 hours
* Often includes a cluster of 5-10 feeding episodes over 2-3 hours followed 
by a deep sleep of 4 to 5 hours.

I can go dig out more text, but these were handy.  The main gist is DO NOT 
SEPARATE mother and baby.  And there are tons of references.  The hospital 
may have to rethink the whole idea - follow the physiology, not the 
protocols - wouldn't that be amazing!!!!    Pat in SNJ 

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