Breastfeeding Newborns: What to expect in the early days

If you can, you should try to breastfeed your newborn within the first hour of birth. After this time, your baby can become sleepy for up to 24 hours and can be disinterested in feeding and hard to rouse for feeds. Place your baby skin to skin as soon as you can following your baby’s birth. There is no urgency to latch your baby immediately and if you just leave your baby on your chest you will see they will use some of their instinctive primitive reflexive behaviours to head towards the source of their milk.

Benefits of this first early feed include keeping baby warm by being skin to skin, calming the baby, giving baby colostrum as its very first milk and releasing oxytocin which makes your uterus contract and reduces your bleeding as well as making you feel very in love with your new tiny one.

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