Jennifer you wrote, "All of the discussion I have seen so far assumes that babies born in hospitals can in some way be reflective of the biological norm, but they cannot. Having given birth at home and worked extensively with midwives and their clients, I can assure you they are different babies. I am not saying a baby born at home never has difficulty nursing or that every baby born in hospital will. I am saying that midwives don't tend to wait and see, b/c they know this is not normal. Babies born at home usually don't even lose weight, so they must surely be eating well from the beginning." I agree with you. Birthing in hospitals is not the biological norm. Part of the fact that homebirthed babies do not usually lose weight may not even have to do so much with eating well as with the fact that the home environment is less stressful to infants. I remember years ago hearing a NICU nurse describe how some premies literally shut-down because of the NICU environment--the noise, the lights, etc. These premies looked like they were sleeping when in fact they were not. If one gently pulled the eyelids of these infants, they would stare back at you. Their defense against the stress of the NICU environment was to shut it out by closing their eyes. In doing home visits when I worked with WIC, I encountered full-term, hospital-born infants that were using the same kind of defensive action. The mothers told me they could not awaken these babies to nurse. I would assume from the descriptions of the birth that it was the effect of drugs. But I began to suspect after a time that this was not so much the drugs, as a response to being overly stressed. Often when mothers understood that their babies were stressed, they would work towards finding ways to make the infant feel safe and secure. That security of being near mom, often facilitated breastfeeding far better than any other suggestions I made. From my experience, Jennifer's post makes absolute sense to me. Valerie W. McClain, 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