Breastfeeding 101: The First 48 Hours, Part Two

Hours 4-24 after birth

When people ask me for hands on help in the first 24 hours I often hesitate. In my mind I have no business trying to interfere in the early stages of breastfeeding because there is usually no problem to "fix". Of course baby isn't very interested in breastfeeding for long periods at regular intervals, they were just born! Your baby is currently figuring out what life outside the womb looks like.

You grew and nourished your baby in the womb from that tiny poppy seed to this wonderful, fully formed baby. So your baby does not pop out frantically looking for food (I'm SO glad you are here Mum, I haven't had a bite to eat in 9 months, feed me!"), they emerge wondering why they feel the urge to find the breast and suck; as your milk slowly starts to increase they suddenly see the point and the breast then becomes associated with food!

When I go into a hospital room anywhere up to 24 hours after the birth, I generally do two things. Firstly I unwrap the baby from the swaddle and take them out of the plastic bassinet and place them skin to skin with Mum. When you do skin to skin you want to make sure that there are no blankets between you and that baby is completely chest to chest with Mum (I say the baby should be like "Spiderman attached to the side of a building"!) I love the position of this Mum below, I usually place a blanket over the pair of them and tuck it under Mum's arms for security.

The point of doing this is that baby cannot get to the breast from the bassinet! The greatest gift you can give your baby during this time is access to your body and time. Baby does not know what an hour is, baby does not know what a minute is; they only know when they feel the urge to seek out the breast and try and latch on. They may suckle for a minute or two, they may go for a bit longer. They may want to do this very frequently during the first 24 hours - this is COMPLETELY normal! It's not about food, it's about familiarity.

The second thing I might do is teach Mum how to hand express. When baby is still sleepy from birth it can be useful for Mum to try and hand express small amounts of colostrum and spoon feed them to baby. This ensures that a bit of milk comes out of mom and into baby, the route of transfer doesn't really matter for now. Also, if you try hand expression and don't see anything coming out, that's fine! It may take some time for the milk to appear, it's all about practice for now.

This is a great video on hand expression, the more you practice the better you will get at it and the more milk you take out, the more your body will try to make, so it can actually help increase milk supply long term.

So, lie back, rest when you can and have your baby skin to skin. Hand express and spoon feed as able, but most importantly, use this time to get to know your baby. You only need to remember two things: skin to skin and hand expression!