Biological nurturing - any information or experiences?

[TheProvincialLady]

I have recently been told about biologocal nurturing, which is supposed to be a nice easy way of getting BF off to a good start. It basically seems to mean lean back and stick the baby on your body to sort himself out, but there must be more to it than that Has anyone tried this or got a good link/book I can seek out?

Google it, TPL - there's a site specially devoted to it

Ah cheers

I heard Dr Suzanne Colson speak at a conference. It was pretty inspirational. I haven't used it myself but I would definitely look into it for a new mum.
www.biologicalnurturing.com/
I imagine google would get you there!

I had a look at the website but there doesn't seem to be much parctical information. Maybe there doesn't need to be, maybe that is the beauty of it!

I've come across this before & was confused, as to me it just basically seemed all you did was relax with the baby for cuddling & feeding in a comfy positions. I would think most people do this anyway unless there are specific bf probs.

I think at the heart of it is the idea that we are now all comfortable with the idea of natural child birth and encouraging a mother to listen to her instincts in labour - walking around, in water, dancing to AC/DC - whatever. But then with breastfeeding it's a checklist of 'stuff' - tummy to tummy, nose to nipple, hands here not there. And while undoubtably all the stuff is extremely useful especially if a mother is having problems it isn't the ONLY way to breastfeed. Sometimes if we trust a baby's instincts a bit more and encourage a mother to tap into her instincts too they can find a way that works beautifully.
And you are right there isn't necessarily a lot to it - mother lies back (usually) and baby is on her chest tummy on. Baby self-latches (usually).
If you look in the publications section of the site and look at Colson's articles which are hyperlinked she discusses in more detail why sitting upright may not be plan A.

Have to say I gave it a go with ds and I couldn't see how it could possibly work(with us at least).

If he managed to get his mouth to the right position his body would fall off my body and then his mouth would unlatch.

We didn't try it from birth mind you.

we didn't try it from birth but tried it a few days later when my milk had come in and i was having a terrible time getting him to latch. snuggled up in bed naked and just plonked him on my chest. he found his own way to the nipple, fed brilliantly and then fell asleep content for the first time in days.

we did this quite often, whenever he'd had a bad feed as it took him a while to get the hang of it, and it always resulted in a good feed and a contented baby.

as nelly says though, the baby can get into a position where it is a bit awkward to support him. when he was a bit bigger i found i could let him latch on himself and then sort of roll over onto our sides while he was still latched so he wasn't in danger of toppling off!

as an aside, it's very amusing watching this tiny little thing snuffle around frantically trying to find his food

There was a baby opposite when I had my DD who did that - worked her way up the mums body to find the nipple. It was quite instinctive and the midwives remarked on it.

Just as well as the mother didn't seem very engaged and was only keen to get home so her own mother could take over.

But I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it.

I think there are some videos around on the net showing just born babies snuffling up to the breast once placed on the mum's tum. DS was placed on my tum & it might have been interesting to see if he could haul himself up for the first feed if I hadn't been haemhorraging into unconsciousness...

Oh poor you elvisgirl. Glad you made it back into consciousness!

Thanks everyone for this. I am going to look into trying it when DC is born. I have seen some footage of babies doing that crawl thing and it makes me feel quite emotional Maybe it's because it won't be long now until I have a newborn of my own.

Anyway, thanks again.

provincialLady - I still get weepy when I see those videos and DS is 9mo.

We never tried biological nurturing as such but spent a lot of time with my boobs out and plenty of heating on, and once (after 3 days with me not offering him the breast often enough and thinking the bobbing was him being distressed instead of excited) he'd sorted himself out he's always pretty much latched on himself.

I went to a fantastic breast feeding workshop pre DD (now 12 weeks) and she talked about this a lot and showed us videos. It looked amazing and is pretty much what I've done with DD.

I used to do this with my DS in the bath i didnt know there was a name for it!!

i have big nipples and dd2 had problems latching on the left one the first 2 days when i would put her on. if i let her self latch, she got on much more successfully. i even learned off her how to position her to latch on when being in bed wasn't a possibility.

Babies are definitely a lot more amazing than we give them credit for. I feel that a lot of the things we try to 'teach' them to do are actually counter intuitive for mothers and not really for the benefit of the mother either - like putting them down all the time so they are not spoiled, not going to them when they cry at night etc. Maybe all this business of positioning for babies rather than letting them do what comes naturally comes under the same category(albeit unwittingly)?

My DD latched and helped herself several hours after she was born while I was trying to sleep with her on my chest. It's just as well; I was clueless about BF and the midwives' idea of helping was to shove her head at my nipple.
Had no idea there was a name for it TBH, I just assumed that a baby's instinct would be to feed and survive and so it would be ok if I left her to it for a bit.
Since then my sister has told me that all 3 of hers did the breastcrawl to her breast and latched by themselves after being born.

I watched the breat crawl video from a mumsnet link when I as pregnant with dd and tried it with her when she was born. Just lay back on a bean bag and flopped her on my front - took about 10 mins i think and I may have pointed her in the right direction a bit but she certainly seemed to know what to do.