"I've encountered an alternate opinion from another Provider who feels that non-nutritive sucking at the breast during colostrum production, is a sign of a feeding problem and that the infant should be taken off the breast and the feeding ended because the baby is just non-nutritively sucking. "

This type of broad statement is very damaging.  There is a difference between "comfort nursing" where the baby is at the breast, happy, full, and not actively drinking (on purpose), and insufficient milk transfer because the baby is unable to latch properly.  "Comfort nursing" is necessary.  Babies want this, moms want this (for a reason!).  Often this is how babies happily fall asleep at the breast, as nature intended.  If nursing is going well, infants spend a lot of time in this state during the first few weeks (again, for a reason!). To broadly imply that no milk transfer is a sign of a feeding problem is damaging since moms will assume that "the baby is using them as a pacifier" which of course carries negative implications (I loathe that statement).   If feeding is not going well, the baby will not be comfort nursing, it will be just insufficiently nursing.  Perhaps the term "non-nutritive sucking" should not be used, since it doesn't provide enough information, and parents may get the wrong idea.  This is only an issue because parents are not getting proper breastfeeding support from the get-go, so they need to hang on to little sound bites as best they can, only they don't provide enough information to be helpful.  Our culture is to blame for that.

Ariel Brewer Louis, PhD, IBCLC

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