Newborn babies don't need much food in the first three or four days of life. Breast-fed babies get minute quantities of creamy colostrum. Some bottle-fed babies are given sugar-water first in hospital; others are given formula from day one. Either way, it is the water part of those drinks that they need most. They probably will not take much, anyway. Feeding is something babies have to learn.
Because they take little food to begin with, breast-fed babies in particular usually lose weight for four or five days before they start to gain. It is quite usual for a baby to lose 225 g (8oz) over the first five days and then gain it back over the next five. a baby's weight at 10 days old is therefore expected to be roughly the same as it was at birth.
When a newborn baby is thirsty or hungry he feels uncomfortable so he cries. But at this early stage he does not cry to be fed. He does not know that the discomfort he feels comes from hunger; that sucking will bring him food or that food will make him feel better. In fact, a basic equation of babyhood that he needs to discover is: "sucking equals food equals comfort".
Some babies are so ready to suck that this vital learning takes place quickly and easily. They may have been practicing sucking their fingers in the womb (we know that some babies do) and once they are born they suck anything that comes their way. Of course, when such a baby is offered the breast or a bottle he sucks that too. Sucking gives him colostrum or milk and that makes him feel good. After two or three repetitions, the feeding lesson is learned.
Other babies are quite different. They cry piteously with hunger-pain but when their mothers try to put a nipple or teat in their mouths they yell around it Even a taste of colostrum or formula does not stop the crying because the connection between that taste and comfort has not been made yet. It will be made, though. However much of a struggle your early attempts at feeding may be, you can be quite sure that your baby has been born with a set of sucking reflexes and that if you evoke those reflexes (rather than trying to plug his • yelling mouth with your nipple or a teat) he will suck. And once he has sucked a few times and discovered the food-comfort it brings him, all will be well.
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