Creating a breastfeeding plan and making sure your caregivers inform you how interventions might impact your goals is important. Learning how skin to skin contact and an uninterrupted first hour support breastfeeding establishment will help you decline non-essential interference and separation.

Kangaroo Care (also referred to as Kangaroo Mother Care) has become a familiar sight in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) around the world in recent years. The image of fragile premature babies cradled against the chest of their parents highlights the importance of skin to skin contact and touch in the days and weeks after a baby is born.

Older babies can breastfeed in almost every position imaginable! But in the early days, they are most likely to attach well if held close against your body. Every mother finds her own most effective way to position, which can change from day to day, feed to feed - and even breast to breast! Explore your options and find what is most comfortable for you and your baby.

Your full-term newborn baby might arrive without a suitcase but she has brought her own packed lunch and water bottle!

Special stores of fat are set aside to support your baby in the very first days of life. This extra energy allows the digestive system time to gently adjust to life outside the womb without the need to process large volumes of milk. Instead, colostrum provides highly concentrated nutrition plus key factors to establish digestion and immune systems.

Babies who have not been exposed to pain relief or other drugs in the maternal bloodstream will respond to being placed uninterrupted against their mothers body with progression through a series of predictable behaviours to bring them to her breast and initiate the first feed. A natural third stage allows the uterus to respond to the oxytocin released in response to her baby’s contact and expel the placenta, at which point the umbilical cord can allow the infant’s blood return to the baby before the cord is cut and the child begins life outside the womb.

And so mammals have reproduced for millennia.

However, the best laid birth plans don’t always go to plan. Many mothers and babies have a different experience. Inductions of labour, interventions such as ventouse delivery or the use of forceps, surgical birth via caesarean … the modern childbirth experience can look very different.

Babies are born with key instincts pre-loaded for immediate use from birth. These reflexes are checked and assessed as part of the APGAR score recorded immediately after birth and a short while later as an indicator of typical development and well-being. These involuntary movements are not controlled but occur in response to stimulation.

hose offering you support can be quick to suggest they look after your baby while you take some time for yourself. They might urge you to express your breastmilk or introduce formula so you can spend longer periods apart from your newborn. While they do have your best interests at heart there can also be an element of wanting to spend some time with your baby themselves. Partners, parents, family and friends can mean well but you do not need to separate from your young breastfed baby to take a break and practice some self-care.

In our modern society, self-care has come to be defined by many as going for a massage or facial at a spa! While this sounds delightful, most new mothers would really just like to go to the toilet in peace. So let’s look at more realistic ways you can practice genuine self-care while still being close to your baby for feeds.

Around 30 years ago, a significant change in baby sleep advice was made and the death rate from Sudden Infant Death (SIDS) was consequently halved. Parents were no longer advised to lay their babies on their tummies to sleep, instead to lay them on their backs. The “Back To Sleep Campaign” has been recognised for its role in educating parents and saving lives.

There are probably more myths and misconceptions about infant sleep than any other aspect of raising a child – and you can’t believe everything you hear! In fact, as many as one-third of parents admit to lying about their babies sleep patterns in an effort to conform with societies beliefs about what is normal!

The sound of a baby crying gets our attention, it is nearly impossible to ignore.⁠

Research suggests men and women respond differently to the sound of a crying baby: in women, the sound triggers feelings of sympathy and caregiving – in men, the responses include irritation and even anger. ⁠

The sound of your own baby crying goes much deeper – it reaches inside you and sets off all sorts of instinctive responses. ⁠

Co-sleeping can be either room sharing where adults and babies have separate sleep surfaces in the same room or bed-sharing where adults and babies share the same sleep surface. A sleep surface is a bed, cot, bassinet or other space intended for sleeping on. This doesn’t include armchairs, couches, sofas, bean bags or other places an adult might fall asleep.

Your newborn needs time to adjust to life outside the womb and one of the best ways to support that transition is babywearing.

A full term baby of around 3.2kg can be carried in most styles of baby carrier right from the start. However choosing from the types of carriers and the range of options can feel overwhelming. So let's look at those best suited to babies in the 4th trimester.

Baby massage has been practiced for thousands of years in many cultures but, like other gentle approaches to infant care, it was rediscovered by the modern parents in the 1970s.

You can do courses, attend short workshops or learn from books and videos … or you can follow your instincts and see what your baby does or doesn’t enjoy.

Although Laid-back Breastfeeding has a lot in common with Baby-led Attachment, it is not only a technique to help new babies learn to attach to the breast but is also an approach to breastfeeding which enables rest and relaxation for mother and baby.

Also called Biological Nurturing, the idea of reclining to breastfeed somehow disappeared in the dark years of the 20th century when the modern world almost lost all wisdom around feeding our babies at the breast. When bottle feeding became normalised and breastfeeding became a hidden task not seen in public, the only image of feeding babies was the upright position sitting on a chair.

Nearly all breastfeeding problems can be fixed. But you need to find the right help when you need it and that can be hard. . It can feel like your calendar is filled with appointments with your child health nurse, local doctor, IBCLC lactation consultant and breastfeeding counsellor. Each will have different opinions and strategies for you to try. And then there are friends and family members whose own experience of breastfeeding might be limited. They might be more comfortable talking to you about formula feeding and seem unsupportive.