I'd like to remind the list that most of this discussion is about what babies do in hospitals the first few days, or what they do after being born in a hospital, and there is a predominance of subscribers from N. America, so most of you have as your reference point, what babies are like after being born in N. American, esp. U.S., hospitals. This is not an insignificant fact. I don't know that any hospitals resemble 'home' more than they resemble other hospitals, and that is one survey I won't be carrying out, though if someone wanted to do it I'd gladly read their results. Michel Odent (again!) found that home-born babies who were in constant contact with their mothers, did not lose weight at all after birth, but began gaining right away. According to Uvnas-Moberg's writing about how oxytocin works together with prolactin to promote anabolism (growth), this makes good sense, and it should probably be making us wonder how we could get our hospitals to foster such outpourings of endogenous oxytocin as well. IMO it would benefit mothers and babies, during birth and after. I have seen plenty of babies who aren't really that eager before the second or third day, some longer. But I have seen plenty who come out, latch within the first hour or two, and stay there. Nobody can convince me that their total intake the first two days is under 100 ml. Some of them are having yellowish, curdy stools before 36 hours, have passed meconium in abundance, and still have not lost weight. Babies in the first category arouse concern because they aren't hungry enough, and we waste all kinds of time and effort trying to force them to act hungry, or at least to eat. Babies in the latter category do fine at home, but in hospital they often end up getting supplements because they are so unusual that both staff and mothers identify them as abnormally hungry, and assume they can't be satisfied at the breast. Fish can't see the water. The environment makes a huge difference. Until you have seen something different, you have difficulty imagining how pervasive the environmental effects are. Simply having big clocks on the walls of all the rooms matters, a lot. Rachel Myr, midwife, IBCLC and oxytocin fan Kristiansand, Norway *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] 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