Surely the biologically if not culturally normal time to start breastfeeding is during not right after a birth. At both my ante natal classes here in the UK 5 years ago I was shown illustration cards with a mother suckling, upright after delivering baby but before delivering the placenta. I managed to get this at home with my second child as the hospital paediatricians at my first child's birth didn't seem to have been to the same classes. After that first birth I wrote to our UK paediatrician's professional body about this. They had just that month stopped having Nestle sponsor their annual conferences and in addition had some kind of committee to look at how to make breastfeeding more normal. I wrote suggesting they be trained in how to put a baby to the breast. I never heard back but met an almost qualified hospital doctor a couple of years later at a 'meet the home birth mothers'do. He had just done his paediatric training and proudly told me that as part of this he has been taught how to initiate breastfeeding. I didn't question quite how this was being taught, but was just pleased to see such an improvement in such a short time. Incidentally he also told me that a lot of the paediatrician's wanted the Nestle sponsorship back. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. *********************************************** 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