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Infants are most alert in the first hour to hour and a half of life.
This is especially true if no maternal medications have been
transferred to the infant during labor and delivery.
Newborns should nurse at the mother's breast during this alert period.
After this initial alert period,
babies go through a two to six or eight hour period of time when they are
much sleepier and less arousable.
Breastfeeding during this period of time may be much more difficult.
Mothers need to be reassured that this is normal and it will not hurt
their baby to go through this period of time without a good feeding.
Studies have shown that infants who nursed soon after birth had a
longer duration of breastfeeding than infants who were first put to
breast 3 to 6 hours after birth (
Taylor, 1986
).
Babies Crawling to Breast
Work by investigators in Sweden has shown that if a mother is not medicated during delivery
and her newborn infant is dried except for the hands and
placed naked below the mothers breast
immediately after delivery,
the infant will slowly move toward the breast.
The infant will pause, lick his hands and then lick the nipple
and areola. The baby will then open his mouth wide and make an
excellent attachment to the breast and begin to suckle.
This facilitates latch-on at later feedings.
In Righard's studies,
by an average of 80 minutes after birth the babies had latched onto
the breast without help from anyone.
If the mother has received medication the infant may carry out the
crawling and self-attachment partially or not at all
(
Righard, 1990
).
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