How to switch on your baby's two-million-year-old breastfeeding reflexes
Switching on your newborns's mammalian reflexes
My breast knows more than I do.
Kate Llewellyn, Alison Bartlett Thinking through breasts 2000
The realization that a baby has innate mammalian reflexes which help her move towards her mother's breast and breastfeed has been the major advance in our understanding of breastfeeding in my life-time.
As Homo sapiens, we are placental mammals: warm-blooded, back-boned animals whose females incubate their young inside their bodies, and birth their young live (not in eggs!). Placental mammals secrete milk from specialised glands to nourish their little one until she is old enough to eat from the environment.
Suckling, from both an evolutionary and neuroscience perspective, is the most important event in the newborn's world.
The hardwired primitive reflexes of the human newborn are ancient responses to her sensory motor experience of the world, ensuring she is able to find and take milk from her mothers' breast.
What are your baby's ancient mammalian reflexes?
You'll soon notice your baby's startle reflex, which stiffens and jerks your newborn's little body away from any sudden, threatening stimulus.
Your newborn comes with five other inbuilt bodily reflexes which propel her to the breast.
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Pressure on baby's cheeks stimulates the oral searching reflex, so that baby turns towards that pressure and opens her mouth. (This doesn't have to be a wide gape.)
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Planting or smooshing baby's face against your upper breast switches on a bobbling reflex, so that baby lifts her face away from your body and bounces her little head down to the breast, often accompanied by a side-bend.
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There is the crawling or stepping reflex, by which she pushes herself up from your tummy to the breast.
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There is the gape reflex, when the baby's mouth opens in response to touch on her lips.
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And there is the grasping reflex of her hands, which helps her cling to you and orient herself to your breast.
The scent of your nipple and areola and the visual landmark of your nipple on the breast also beckon your baby.
A newborn takes her time. She needs to inhale your scent and the scent of your nipple. Her little tongue tastes and licks and explores. The patting of those tiny hands on your breast orients her, switches on her breastfeeding reflexes.
Suckling is the primordial form of sensory motor nourishment
Once baby's mouth locates your nipple, with that little tongue sensing and tasting and licking, once your nipple is inside her lips and contacting the inside of the baby's mouth and palate, sensory nerve endings activate a reflex drop of her jaw.
Suckling is deeply biologically comforting for a baby. The soothing motor rhythmicity of suckling and her satisfaction as all her senses engage in interactions with your body dial down her 'flight-or-fight' sympathetic nervous system.
Soon, tiny amounts of colostrum begin to coat your baby's gut and switch on the 'rest and digest' parasympathetic nervous system.
From an evolutionary perspective, this whole-body sensory-motor enjoyment of breastfeeding is the primary and endlessly repeated context in which your baby's sensory-motor development flourishes over the months to come. Growth and nutrition, though vital, are just one aspect of the breastfeeding ecosystem.
Physiological initiation of breastfeeding is often not enough to protect from breastfeeding problems
But recovery of this ancient female cultural knowledge about how to switch on baby's breastfeeding reflexes is not enough to help many women in our society today breastfeed successfully.
Skin-to-skin contact and laid-back breastfeeding, also known as biological nurturing or baby-led or baby-led/mother-responsive breastfeeding, does not ensure easy enjoyable breastfeeding for many women and their babies. A woman may still find herself dealing with dreadful nipple pain, here, or a baby who fusses at the breast, here, or a baby who has inadequate weight gain, here.
That is, for many, laid-back or baby-led breastfeeding or biological nurturing still results in breast tissue drag.
This is why I developed up the gestalt method over many years of working with breastfeeding women and their babies in the clinic, in response to their need for specific strategies which address these problems.
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You can find out about the gestalt method starting here.
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You can find out why breastfeeding problems are widespread here and here.
Selected references
Bartlett A. Thinking through Breasts: Writing Maternity. Feminist Theory. 2000;1(2):173-188.
