Hi Laurie!

I'm with Liz Brooks and Nils Bergman (who also thinks babies need their sleep). At our hospital we don't routinely force babies to wake up and eat in the first 24 hours. Most of our babies get a good feed soon after delivery (even C-sect) and they do sleep 6-8hrs (or longer). What we often see is after that deep sleep stretch, they breastfeed every 30-45 minutes for several hours. (Usually at night)  when we encourage prolonged skin-to-skin and unlimited access to breast. I think the staff need to reassure parents this frequent feeding is normal and necessary or babies won't get fed frequently enough when they do wake up. Instead parents will introduce pacifiers, swaddling etc to calm the baby.  The key is to make sure that each baby is assessed and followed carefully for good latch and milk transfer when they do wake up to feed. I never was an advocate of squeezing colostrum into teaspoons at 6 hours post delivery:-)

Holly McSpadden, IBCLC
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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