Breast feeding baby for the first few days!

[nancy10]

When a baby is born and the milk hasn't actually come in, is the colostrum actually satisfying the baby's hunger?

I think so, a newborn baby has a tiny, tiny stomach and colostrum is quite calorific. My milk didn't come in for 4 days and the baby was fine.

Yes. Newborn baby stomach size is that of a marble - just a few ml is sufficient.

Thanks for your replies, I am planning to breast feed and was just wondering!

They might be satisfied from a hunger point of view with the colostrum but that might not take away the urge/need to suckle.

So if even if baby has had a feed they still might want to suckle for a long time afterwards - suckling calms baby down, they 'know' they are not alone if they are bfing from mum, it warms them up, and helps mum's milk come in too.

It can be very worrying if you are lead to believe that babies have a feed and then don't want to suckle again unless they are hungry but babies suckle a lot in the early weeks regardless of hunger.

Kellymom has a good list of feeding cues so if you can have a look at that before baby is born that will get you off to a flying start. (the rest of the site is packed full of useful info too)

i have to admit by day 4 with ds2 and ds3 I was literally begging for my milk to come in because they both got to a point of feeding every 15-30 mins!!!

as truthsweet says though, the stimulation is good for you too and is what helps build up a good supply of milk, so my advice would be to go with the flow, settle down in bed or on the sofa and enjoy your new baby while having someone bring you lots of tea and cake grin]

Also I think a newborn baby has stores to some extent which help keep them going along with the colostrum.

Don't worry too if your baby isn't hungry at first - babies aren't born particularly hungry, and they have fat reserves to see them through the early days until the mature milk comes in. My DS wasn't interested in feeding until about 20 hours after birth - before that point he had a brief suckle and then just wanted to sleep. I was getting quite stressed about it as all around me on the postnatal ward were babies guzzling bottles of formula and I thought my baby must be starving. But it's quite normal for them to not be particularly interested at first - and then once he was hungry, he wanted to feed non-stop! Colostrum is very concentrated and babies don't need much of it. They want to feed frequently as it's so easily digested so their stomachs empty quickly - frequent feeding doesn't mean they're not getting enough, so don't worry about that. It's a good thing as it stimulates your supply so there will always be plenty of milk For the first days/weeks get your feet up, get the DVD remote ready and have someone bring you lots of drinks and chocolate healthy snacks.

The amount of colostrum goes up and up, until the milk comes in - I've known women to express as much as 30ml, if they were expressing in the early days rather than feeding directly (baby in SCBU or whatever).