I was fortunate to have physician assisted home births, while living in Chicago. One thing that really impressed me about this practice was that the physician would not leave the house (or hospital, if that was where you chose to give birth) before the baby latched and was feeding well. One thing that they were concerned with was that a naturally born baby who would not/could not latch was likely to have underlying problems. I seem to remember them talking about heart defects being a suspicion with a non-latching baby. They had a select population of low-risk mamas who breastfed, and they kept birth low-risk by immediately placing the baby on the mom's chest, delaying cord clamping and feeding the mother during and after labor. I just thought, and still do think, that using the baby's ability to breastfeed as a baromoter of the baby's well-being was an interesting part of caring for the baby. Best wishes from sunny Ohio, Heather "Sam" Doak Heather "Sam" Doak [log in to unmask] *********************************************** 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