Mothers and babies form the most amazing system. Babies are so vulnerable at birth - and yet so capable. Mothers are so powerful. The breastcrawl is an amazing part of the system that makes up birth and breastfeeding.
Babies, full term, and unmedicated and undamaged from the birth process are optimally primed to breastfeed - it is their only source of nutrition for around the first 6 mnths, and their main source of nutrition for 1-2 years or more. Over the years, a fabulous system has developed between mother and child. But one that has been largely lost, by *modern* interventions. When the baby is born, his sense of smell is acute. And so is his eyesight - at a close range - between mother's stomach and nipple and mother's nipple and face. After birth, baby needs to organise his senses, and move at his own pace to the breast. He is born with a "stepping" relex that allows him to "crawl" up his mother's body to the breast. (not very long ago we used to think of this as an archaic reflex - no use now, and believe that newborns couldn't see). As baby crawls, he kneads his mother's stomach with his legs, and kneads her breast with his hands, releasing oxytocin, the "love hormone". This helps her uterus contract, but it also helps her bond with her baby. Not so very long ago (still, unfortunately, in many places) babies were taken from their natural environment - their mother's body - weighed, measured, wrapped like little bundles where they couldn't use their limbs or their senses and had their heads forced onto their mothers breast. Many on this forum will attest to the breastfeeding problems this caused.
Mothers, as well, operate under the influence of these instincts and hormonal cues if they are allowed - in all these films of mothers and babies, mothers do instinctually help their babies, waiting for their cues, rubbing their backs, kissing their babies - falling in love - the love that will last a lifetime.
It is absolutely worth writing *skin to skin* undisturbed time with baby into your birth plan and insisting that your wishes be respected. The world, the visitors, the medical staff can wait. For we mothers, this precious time happens only 1 or two or if we are lucky, three times in our lives these days. The bonds we form underpin our whole mothering experience.
The great thing is that we get a "second chance". for many of us, birth does not, these days, go as planned. But we can regain the magic of that early time by being skin to skin with our baby - in bed or in the bath. As baby relaxes into our body, he regains the instincts he had after birth, and in this undisturbed, peaceful state will often be able to latch on and feed properly.
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