Glenda,
I am not hospital based, but I see early discharge sleepy newborns in my
private practice.  If a baby is somewhat alert, I assit mom to unwrap him and
cue him to take breast by having her brush his lower lip gently with her
nipple.  If baby is very sleepy or mom is engorged, we use an electric
breastpump and I fingerfeed baby just enough to supply the energy to wake up
and eat more.  Then we work at getting him to the breast.  Usually works
within an hour or two.  This is very time intensive, but does seem to work out
well.  If mom is sent home alone to do the next step (getting baby on breast)
it often does not work out, so I resign myself to having them stay while she
pumps and baby wakes up.  When there are suck problems, these need to be
addressed as well, but with the average epidural baby, the problem seems to be
waking them up to nurse before they run out of energy to suck.  Hope this
helps.
Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC