Hi all I am not sure that the position of baby is critical for a baby to suckle. I believe what is critical is allowing the baby time to self-direct his/her own feeding. Some babies may need a more support than others e.g. Unwell babies, or with various syndromes or difficult labours, but I find that most babies are able to suckle effectively if we understand how they do it. Let me explain. I began looking at mums who were feeding painfree and baby was thriving. I noticed that mum simply exposed her breast, mum held baby close, baby located the breast and the nipple, extended their head, gaped and took a mouthful of breast tissue. Hands could be any where. Head could sometimes even be turned toward mother, in fact it did not look good but mum was in no pain and there was good transfer of milk. In 2000 I went to an international conference where Nils Bergman was speaking and learnt about the wonders of skin2skin. I saw babies move, seek out the breast and suckle effectively. I watched a video "Mandy and Matt" that showed the instinctive behaviour of babies at the breast taking the breast unaided. A 2 years later I heard about Sue Cox (IBCLC -one of the first) explain about the importance of instinctive behaviour. I then heard and read about Tina Smilie and her work on self attachment. Then finally I decided to try it for myself. It is this - I put everything that I had been learning over the years together and let go of what I had been doing. So this is what I did. I explained skin to skin and told the mums that baby was born to breastfeed. I painted a picture that humans were members of the animal family that carried babies (thanks Nils) I then encouraged the mum to do skin to skin and got them to watch their baby. I encourage mum to support the baby under bubs bottom. I find baby will make their way to nipple, will lick,nuzzle and massage (paw) the areola area (or near it), extend and then take a mouthful of breast tissue. Sometimes mum instinctively shapes ( or supports breast tissue) and this is fine but they can do it numerous ways. I find that majority of babies suckle with minimum entervention. The more mum does (including how to position) the less successful and the more times mum has to detach and try again. The next step depends on the age of the baby, hydration states, type of labour and mother. I am finding that sometimes the position the finds himself is looks very wrong but yet the mother says that for the first time breastfeeding is enjoyable and baby looks as though he is enjoying his feed. I now do not talk about positioning and attachment - but rather optimal breastfeeding environments that allow the baby to do as much as possible. In the local hospital, they have taken this seriously and the first line of attack is skin to skin and time. Interesting, since they have been doing this, they have found that that babies who have not been able to breastfeed in the first day have underlying eitology - one had hirsprungs the other had an asymmetrical face. Skin to skin and time - are the first lines of having successful breastfeeding. Using skin to skin and self directed feeding, we seem to be able to find more quickly the baby who needs more support or is sick in some way. My partner, Joanne, recently talked to midwife researcher who is looking at the effects of non-intervention on the part of midwives and mother. Joanne said that while the analysis is in progress, preliminary findings are that where the midwife has not put the baby to breast but baby has put themselves on the breast, there has not been an issue with suckling. I am looking forward to her results. If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them. KInd regards Ruth Fiedler Australia *********************************************** 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