Another wonderful skin to skin story:

I have just come from visiting a mother who called me yesterday, and
with a couple of teensy weensy adjustments she had a totally
pain-free feed for the first time (baby is 2 weeks - all she needed
to do was to wait for the gape and bring him on, instead of poking
herself in).

She has a severe anxiety disorder which prevents her leaving the
house. She has other serious family problems which I won't go into,
and this, her fourth baby, was not wanted and she had been
considering adoption. She had formula fed her other 3, and is from a
family and social group where hardly anyone breastfeeds.

The baby was born at home, very quickly, a bouncing 8 pounds. The
on-call midwife got there just in time...and wrapped them both up
together in bed, and explained about skin to skin to this mother, who
agreed to give it a go. She wasn't pushing breastfeeding, she just
talked about skin to skin. 'He just lay beside me and latched himself
on and stayed there an hour!' she said.

And, basically, she fell in love with him.

She is now besotted with him, and though very anxious about the bf,
is so proud and pleased she is bf. She wanted to hear me rattle off a
load of stuff about antibodies, and how her milk is The Best...

The follow-up care she got was not so good - hence the soreness, not
to mention some questionable advice on diet - but there was no way
she was going to stop now.

The more I know and see about skin to skin, the more I see how it can
repair damaged relationships, and it can stand a mother in good stead
against less than perfect support later.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html