The Breast Crawl

I heard about the breast crawl at my trip to The Farm last fall but couldn't download the video from breastcrawl.org.  So you can imagine my happiness when I found that the blog Descent Into Motherhood was able to download the video and had placed it on their blog!  Please check out this video and share it with friends.

I think breast-feeding advocates can sometimes be a bit too proactive about initiating breastfeeding.  As a doula, I have felt I must at least attempt to help mom nurse right away because baby is often whisked away for an undetermined amount of time and when returned, has often lost the alertness that a baby has immediately after birth.  The video notes that most babies will master the breastcrawl in 30-60 minutes.  Unfortunately many babies are lucky to get 30 minutes of skin to skin time directly after birth and may get less then that.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could put babies right between mom's breasts and hold off on weighing baby etc. until after he/she has initiated breastfeeding, even if that means waiting an hour or more?  Instead of taking the initiative to facilitate a good latch, what if we could let baby find the way by him/her self and step in only if there are problems.