Jan: As a matter of fact, I can remember 2 normal hospital births in the good U.S. of A. The births of my last 2 babies 11 and 9 years ago! And my 11 year-old started out life as a 35 week preemie! Both births were totally unmedicated VBACs assisted by a CNM and both were short stay (24 hours and 6 hours). The only reason I stayed 24 hours after my preemie's birth was that my ped developed this nervous tic when I suggested going home after about 8 hours with my 35 weeker and when I put more thought into it I realized I would be expected to make dinner later that day, so I elected to stay overnight. So it can be done. Of course, they're still talking about me at the hospital, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was so wonderful having alert babies to nurse. I'm convinced my preemie did as well as she did was that she was NOT medicated. The SCN nurses are still a little miffed that they did not get to take care of her. The only time I've ever watched the clock for nursing was with her - it took her 18 hours of skin-to-skin contact to begin to nurse consistently well. Exclusive nursing also helped her thru a bili of 23 at 72 hours of age and today she is an extremely healthy gifted 11 year-old who (in her words) is "under-tall". Pam Hirsch, RN,BSN,CLC Clinical Lead, Lactation Services Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital Barrington, IL USA *********************************************** 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(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html