Birth (Leaflet M02) entails novelties of every kind, far wider ranging than you will ever face again. Within a few seconds your first breath introduces you to air and to other forms of life which challenge your personal immunity (Leaflet S11). All your senses are bombarded simultaneously with new impressions and your skin is confronted with the phenomenon of temperature. Your circulation is radically revised and you are suddenly aware of the weight of your limbs.
Sorting this out takes your whole infancy and centres on rediscovering your mother from the outside. You have to piece her familiar heart-beat, warmth and altered voice together with novelties — her touch and appearence, taste and smell. To begin with you have no physical means for connecting all these: you cannot comprehend that these separate impressions arise in one being. But you still sense the same loving climate that has pervaded your life from its conception, and are profoundly reassured. This frees you to explore the novelties with serene curiosity while your body settles into the new terms of its existence.
Your feeding at mothers breast is the epicentre of all this. It conveys ideal food of precisely the character you are familiar with and commissions your digestive functions gradually, without fuss. It directly protects you against infections from mother’s past (Leaflet S12) and helps you to cope with present challenges new to you both. It automatically caters for your increasing appetite and changing needs, coping even with your extra thirst on hot days. Its subtlest function is to simplify your task in dealing with the alien creatures that jostle you for space to live their lives, some of whom are ready to colonize you if you let them. It is easy for you to distinguish these from your food because mother’s milk retains the character familiar to you since before you were born. So you confidently reject anything you do not recognize, without compromising your nourishment. Only later, when you have learnt the basics of how to maintain your immunity, do you choose to explore those other creatures as possible foods themselves. This much more subtle judgement — do I kill it, or can I digest it? — is not enforced before you are ready. Consequently you far more seldom make mistakes during weaning (Leaflet M12) that could result in allergy (Leaflet P12), cot death (Leaflet P71) or susceptibility to infection.
Besides all of these advantages bestowed by feeding exclusively on breast-milk, mother’s love surges and flows with it effortlessly and directly. The satisfaction she derives from being suckled passes directly back to you. It sparkles in the eyes you gaze into, tones the endearments that fall on your ears, and motivates her hands and body as they caress and warm your skin. Even the scent of her armpit, unlovely to her, is wonderful to you. All these delights powerfully reinforce your personal wholeness and profoundly motivate and gratify hers. They kindle your appetite for living and refresh your mother’s, whatever disappointments her past may have held. This is your access to the purposiveness and confidence that enable you to live without fear, whatever odds you may be challenged to overcome.
What to do as parents
1. Get your new baby home from hospital as soon as you can. Unfamiliar surroundings and routine are very unsettling and undermine your confidence in coping. Simple things that come easily at home are difficult elsewhere.
2. Suckle your baby early and often. His instinctive desire to explore your breast is strongest from about twenty minutes after his birth and certainly within the first hour of his life, when his suckling can help to deliver your afterbirth and stop your womb bleeding (Leaflet M02). Thereafter impose no timetable or deadlines; simply relax into exploring each other. Avoid using scented soap or deodorant, at least above your waist.
3. Get your suckling technique right, from the beginning. He can move his head to and fro if you support its weight, so balance it on your forearm. Poise your breast so as to point your nipple prominently. As you cradle him in towards it aim his nose at your nipple; this prompts him to lift his mouth towards it, arching his neck slightly and freeing his nose to breathe. Then press his chest close to yours and keep his head poised on your forearm while he chooses for himself the most comfortable angle at which to settle.
4. Do not let anyone give him anything else. Your milk flow takes two days to begin and will correspond in quantity to how hard and how often your baby sucks your nipples meanwhile. If any part of his appetite is satisfied otherwise, your milk supply will fall that far short of his needs.
5. If he is nervous or fretful handle him more, not less. Have him in bed with you, skin to skin. Massage him and speak soothingly, the way you would like for yourself. Intimacy with you reassures him as nothing else can, and reaffirms your self-confidence. You cannot spoil an infant and can easily train him to sleep alone when that time comes.
6. After a few weeks feeding settles into a confident routine. You may seem to be short of milk occasionally if his appetite suddenly increases; two days’ unruffled perseverence sets that right. Then just keep going until he starts to wean himself, around six months (Leaflet M12). Don’t be put off by prejudices, even professional ones: most ailments do not call for early weaning.
7. La Leche League and National Childbirth Trust are the best sources of experienced self-help (Addresses S20), though many health visitors and midwives are excellent too.
8. Twins and super-twins do not rule out breast feeding automatically. It is much more convenient since you can feed two at a time. You are perfectly well equipped to succeed and can eat lots more yet still lose weight!
9. Premature, feeble, and underweight babies need your milk more, not less — by cup and spoon or tube at first if need be. Jaundice is seldom a reason to stop, either. The kind that is caused by breast feeding is quite harmless.
10. Adoption and artificial feeding do not make second-class families, even though you do not have the advantages of breast feeding. Every other means remains open to cultivate your loving intimacy to perfection.