Mary,
I found your comments interesting.  Positioning and latch are vital
because newborn babies have no postural stability in their body without
outside support.  Postural stability is essential for functional motor
activity.  This means lousy support equals lousy sucking skills.
        There are also infant factors that influence sucking skills, two
of these are neurologic maturity/health and organization.  Neuro health
and organization are both decreased in infants who have been exposed to
drugs in utero (including labor analgesics), a logical reason for the
difficulties we so often see.  The other thing that disorganizes infant
nervous systems is stress from hunger, loneliness, overstimulation,
whatever.  This could be why positioning could be more vital for a baby
who is fed infrequently, the poor little thing has gotten hungrier and
more disorganized than the baby fed frequently, and has less organization
to assist their muscle movements, including sucking.  So more support is
neccessary to assist them...  Makes sense to me.
--
Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC  NYC  [log in to unmask]