Dear Friends: Gill Rapley, the midwife who administers the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative in the UK, did a fabulous presentation about this at the International Conference in Orlando, Florida last month. She pointed out that babies are born able to feed themselves, via self-attachment. And most 2 year olds can feed themselves. So why do mothers go through such a difficult process of feeding babies at all, much less on some arbitrary schedule? She has some lovely videos of babies feeding themselves; her presentation is warm and funny and absolutely accurate. Babies watch, and then grab. A breastfed baby can eat anything it wants, because it has been twice exposed to the proteins from the mothers' diet; first, via the amniotic fluid that it drinks, and second, via the changing flavors of the milk. Babies need to feed on cue, at their pace. We teach mothers not to watch the clock; we need to be teaching them not to watch the calendar either. warmly, Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE Maternal-Child Adjunct Faculty Union Institute and University Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human Lactation Support the WHO Code and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html