Moms are so germy...perhaps the baby would be better off spending its nights and days with a terry-wrapped wire frame model of a mother. It worked for the rhesus monkeys... so said (tongue firmly in cheek) Arly Helm. Actually, it worked--but only if what you want is NEUROTIC monkeys! Those who were females never knew how to respond appropriately to males when they got to breeding age, nor were they very good mothers, etiher. Do you suppose that helps explain some of the really awful mothering we all see from time to time? (in human mothers, that is) Also, the male monkeys raised with the wire mothers were unusually aggressive, if I recall the follow-up data correctly. That, too, seems to have a human corollary, or am I reaching? Def. of LC service: "We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations." Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Homewood, IL)- [log in to unmask] WEB PAGE: http://www.mcs.com/~auerbach/lactation.html