Teaching moms to "watch the baby" is fine but some moms (and nursing staff)
are clueless on what constitutes milk intake. They often think that if the
baby latches on and sucks a few times that this is a full feeding. Generally
speaking,
most people need some kind of guideline to know how often and how long to
nurse, and
learning to observe baby's cues is one part of that.

Baby has to nurse enough to fill his tummy and granted on day one, his tummy
is small. Part of "watching the baby" is learning about feeding cues,
observing the latch on,
the baby's sucking and swallowing, as well as watching for adequate diaper
count.

I've seen too many mothers "watch the baby" and let him be content with
nursing
5 minutes a side going on day two or three, and end up with a baby who has
lost
more than 7% of it's birth weight, and is not  voiding or stooling
adequately. And yes, if I
have a newborn baby who is older than 24 hours and isn't sucking and
swallowing well enough,
I do encourage him to nurse longer and more often.

Kathy Eng, BSW, IBCLC

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html