Heather and Rob, This story reminds me of a something a nurse told me. She was involved in a study involving skin-to-skin contact. I can't remember if the study was designed to look at infant temperature, or maternal behaviors, but they were looking at the difference between breastfed and bottle-fed babies. Both sets of babies were left skin-to-skin with mothers for hours. They had to scrap the study because so many of the bottle-feeding mothers were discovered tucked in with their babies nursing happily away at breast! They didn't publish the study because they couldn't do a comparison between breast and bottle. The results speak for themselves and would have made an interesting article anyway. If that nurse is on Lactnet, maybe she can clarify the details. I've had more positive effects from leaving mom and baby alone wrapped up together than any other intervention that requires a lot of "tools and gadgets". -- Jeanne Mitchell, Austin, TX http://www.flash.net/~xanth/home.htm mailto:[log in to unmask] "You can tell the quality of a person by how they treat people they don't need." My Dad