First Feedings : Putting your baby to your breast

The first feed

The busy hours you spent in labor and giving birth are often followed by a brief period of reflective calm. The staff that was involved in your delivery seem to melt away. You and your partner are left to marvel at and savor the arrival of your beautiful new baby. It is an emotional time — nine months of anticipation and you now meet the tiny new person you have created together!

Putting your baby to your breast

Doctors recommend to put your baby to your breast during the first 1 hours of it’s birth. When the nipple is touched and stimulated, hormones oxytocin and prolactin are produced. Oxytocin helps the uterus contract to pre-pregnancy size. This also decreases the chances of excessive bleeding after delivery. Prolactin makes the milk come in. Although you will be producing only colostrum for the first few days, the sooner you get the milk or “let-down” reflex working, the better. The idea immediately after delivery is to get the baby used to being on the breast. So don’t worry if the baby does not seem to be very interested in feeding immediately. Most term babies already have a sucking or rooting reflex. So when you touch the corners of their mouths with a finger or nipple, they will turn to the stimulus and attempt to suckle. Placing the newborn baby skin to skin against your chest will help encourage your baby to smell the colostrum, latch on and begin his first feeding.

Term babies already have food reserves built up when they are born. Many women feel anxious if their baby does not start to feed immediately. But the truth is that babies are more often interested in sleeping after labor and delivery. But, premature babies need bottle or drip feedings of expressed milk or formula during the first 24–48 hours of life. This is because they have less reserves and the sucking reflex is rarely developed before 35 weeks of gestation.

For the first few days, the colostrum that you produce is an elixir for your baby. Colostrum is a pre-milk substance packed with protein and immune molecules. Approximately two to five days after birth, the colostrum production will give way to a higher volume of milk.

What is BREAST CRAWL ?

Breast crawl is the innate instinct of newborns, when placed on the mother’s abdomen to move towards the nipple and attach to it for breastfeeding all by themselves.These movements start approximately 12 to 44 minutes after birth, followed by spontaneous suckling at around 27 to 71 minutes after birth. Thus, organised feeding behaviour develops in the first few hours of life.A baby is born with many instinctive abilities which enable her to perform the Breast Crawl. With all these innate programmes, the infant seems to come into life carrying a small computer chip with the set of instructions.Smell, vision and taste all help the newborn to detect and find the breast. Auditory inputs and touch make her comfortable and help to create a suitable environment.