Lactation Assistance Services

Kangaroo Mother Care — it’s all about keeping mothers and newborns together so that babies can thrive. Here’s a handout by one of the original KMC advocates, Dr. Nils Bergman. I’m posting it here with his permission. Print it out, share it with care providers, friends, and family. Good stuff.

Kangaroo Mother Care Handout

The more we watch new babies, the more we see how amazing they are. New parents get to see this up close all day long and are usually so proud of their babies. I love the book “Your Amazing Newborn” by Marshall and Phyllis Klaus. It has great photographs of new babies interacting with parents and grandparents.

Babies are born ready to be social. They are also born ready to breastfeed. There is a video on-line that shows a baby just after birth, crawling up her mother’s chest and latching herself onto the breast for a successful breastfeeding. You can find it at this link: http://breastcrawl.org/

I’m amazed watching this video. Have any of you watched a baby do this in person? I usually see mothers and babies when they have returned home from a hospital birth. I hope to get to see this some day. What do you think of this video? Let me know…

While I haven’t seen a baby do this after birth, I have seen lots of very young infants do a wonderful job of latching themselves at the breast when they are given access to the breast and time. Mothers can take advantage of this by spending time skin to skin with their baby and following baby’s lead in latching.