Baby’s second night
You’ve made it through your first 24 hours as a new parent. Maybe you have other children, but you are a new parent all over again. And now it’s your baby’s second night.
All of a sudden, your little one discovers that he or she is no longer back in the warm and comfortable (albeit crowded) womb where they have spent the last 9 months – and it is SCARY out here! They aren’t hearing your familiar heartbeat, the swooshing of the placental arteries, the soothing sound of your lungs or the comforting gurgling of your intestines. Instead, they’re in a cot, swaddled up tight, and wearing clothes!!! All sorts of people have been handling baby, and they are not yet accustomed to the new noises, lights, sounds and smells. They have found one thing though, and that’s their voice …. and you find that each time you take them off the breast where they comfortably drifted off to sleep, and put them in the cot – they protest, loudly!
In fact, each time you put them back on the breast they feed for a little bit and then go back to sleep. As you take them off and put them back to bed they cry again …. and start rooting around, looking for you. This goes on – seemingly for hours. A lot of new parents are convinced it is because their milk isn’t “in” yet, and the baby is starving. However, it isn’t that, but the baby’s sudden awakening to the fact that the most comforting and comfortable place for them to be is at the breast. It’s the closest to “home” they can get. It seems that this is pretty universal among babies.
So, what do you do? When they drift off to sleep at the breast after a good feed, break the suction and slide your nipple gently out of their mouth. Don’t move them except to pillow their head more comfortably on your breast. Don’t try and burp them – just snuggle with them until they fall into a deep sleep where they won’t be disturbed by being moved. Babies go into a light sleep state (REM) first, and then cycle in and out of REM and deep sleep about every ½ hour or so. If they start to root and act as though they want to go back to the breast, that’s fine… this is their way of settling and comforting themselves.
Another helpful hint is that their hands were their best friends in utero. They could suck their thumb or fingers anytime they were the slightest bit disturbed or uncomfortable. All of a sudden they’ve had their hands taken away from them and someone has put mittens on them! They have no way of self-soothing themselves with those mittens on. Babies need to touch, and feel, and even their touch on your breast will increase your oxytocin levels which will help boost your milk supply! So take the mittens off and loosen the blanket so they can get to their hands. They might scratch themselves, but it will heal very rapidly – after all, they had fingernails when they were inside you and no one put mittens on them then!
By the way this behaviour might happen every once in a while at home too, particularly If you’ve changed their environment such as going to the doctor, or out shopping, or a day with the grandparents. Don’t let it throw you – sometimes babies just need some extra snuggling at the breast, because for the baby, the breast feels like “home”.