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To activate a newborn?s internal GPS?so baby knows where she is and what to do?she needs to feel her entire front against her mother. This full frontal contact also activates the ?pressure buttons? on a newborn?s ribs, wrists, inside of the knees, and tops or bottoms of the feet, which stabilizes her spine, giving her more control over her movements so can feed more effectively. You can make this happen when you?re sitting up straight. But why work this hard?

In the commonly used cradle, cross-cradle, and football/rugby holds, mothers and babies must fight the effects of gravity to get babies to breast level and keep their fronts touching. If gaps form between them (which can happen easily with gravity pulling baby?s body down and away), this disorients baby, which can lead to latching struggles. The pull of gravity makes it impossible for a newborn to use his inborn responses to get to his food source and feed. For baby, it is like trying to climb Mount Everest. Instead of mothers and babies working together as breastfeeding partners, mothers must do all of the work. Instead of being able to relax while baby helps, most mothers sit hunched over, tense, and struggling.

To complicate things further, in these positions, gravity can transform the same inborn feeding responses that should be helping babies into barriers to breastfeeding. Head bobbing becomes head butting. Arm and leg movements meant to move babies to the breast become pushing and kicking. Mothers struggling to manage their babies? arms and legs in these upright breastfeeding holds have often told me: ?I don?t think I have enough hands to breastfeed.?

How Natural Breastfeeding Can Help

In Natural Breastfeeding positions, baby rests tummy down on mother?s body, ensuring the full frontal contact that activates his GPS. Baby?s weight pushes the pressure buttons on his front, which improves his coordination for easier feeding. Natural Breastfeeding makes it possible for babies to be the active breastfeeding partners that nature intended. But it?s not just good for babies. Mothers can relax completely and rest while baby feeds, often with both hands free. And gravity helps baby take the breast deeply, so there?s no need to micromanage baby?s latch.

Natural Breastfeeding positions are appropriate any time, but they are especially helpful during the first few weeks, when babies lack the muscular strength and coordination to overcome gravity?s effects on their head. It takes a full year, after all, before babies can resist gravity enough to walk. But babies develop the head-and-neck control they need to fight gravity during breastfeeding much sooner?usually within four to six weeks.

That?s why many mothers who had sore nipples at first discover that as the weeks pass, their pain goes away. It?s not that their nipples ?toughen up.? (Nipples don?t develop calluses like a guitar player?s fingers.) Over time, babies just get coordinated enough to latch themselves on deeply, even in gravity-defying positions. But why wait? In Natural Breastfeeding positions gravity helps babies latch deeper, so mothers can breastfeed in greater ease and comfort right from birth.

A New Normal

If humans learn mainly by seeing and doing and nearly all of the breastfeeding images women see today show the sitting-up-straight positions, then it?s not surprising that some mothers and breastfeeding supporters feel reluctant to try this this unfamiliar new approach.