I'm very interested in the thread of how soon a normal newborn needs to nurse. Saw a baby earlier this week, 8 days old, full term, 3rd baby, six pounds twelve ounces at birth. Mother was given Demerol about forty-five minutes before the baby was born. Baby had not nursed by six hours and by eight hours the staff was trying finger feeding, syringes, SNS and bottles of formula. Hmm, I wonder why they didn't try cup feeding too. When I saw the baby at eight days, she was getting expressed breast milk by bottle and the mother was exhausted. Apparently there were no tests done to pick up any abnormalities such as hypoglycemia before they tried to supplement. The comment was that the baby would get de-hydrated and starve. As a historical note, when my first-born arrived thirty-one years ago, it was hospital policy that all babies were kept NPO fro the first twenty-four hours before they got their first feed of glucose water. Breastfeeding did not go well at all. Has anyone ever considered observing the baby? *********************************************** 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