Learn about feeding

Learn about feeding

To help with your choices, visit the Parent Club website.

A newborn baby’s tummy is tiny and therefore cannot take large volumes of milk. This means that often, in the beginning, babies will feed frequently e.g. 8-12 times in a 24 hour period. We recommend that babies are fed responsively. This means feeding baby when they show feeding cues rather than trying to establish a feeding routine. If breastfeeding, this also means offering the breast to comfort baby or for your own comfort too.

Skin-to-skin contact

We encourage you to cuddle your baby immediately after delivery or as soon as possible thereafter. Skin-to-skin contact helps both you and your baby and has many benefits associated with it.

If your baby is needing to go to the neonatal unit, skin-to-skin contact there is referred to as kangaroo care. If you are not available for skin-to-skin contact or kangaroo care, this is something that can be offered to your partner.

Benefits to you include

• increase in the hormone oxytocin which helps calm and relax you
• enhances your mothering instinctive behaviours and reduces the stress hormone cortisol
• can help with the establishment of your milk supply

Benefits to baby include

• helps regulate heart rate, breathing and temperature
• helps stabilise baby's blood sugar
• helps develop baby's immune system
• increases oxytocin levels and reduces cortisol levels - this helps with bonding, enhances baby's instinctive feeding behaviours and can help with brain development

Carrying out skin-to-skin after delivery and throughout the postnatal period can help relax you, keep baby calm and help establish feeding. Baby being cuddled skin-to-skin with both parents and even siblings (supervised) can have health benefits for all.

Babies need to feel loved. They cannot be spoilt by over-cuddling. Take time out and enjoy this one-to-one time together.

Skin-to-skin contact is not just for the immediate postnatal period, it is something that can be enjoyed at any point throughout your feeding journey, however you chose to feed.

Useful links

• Meeting your baby for the first time - from Parent Club
• Building a happy baby - a guide for parents (pdf, May 2024) - from UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative

Healthy Start vitamins

Within NHS Highland you will be given Healthy Start vitamins free during your pregnancy. We would encourage you to take these, as they contain all the supplements that you and your growing baby require in addition to a healthy diet. You will get 2 free bottles at booking with your midwife and another 2 bottles between 16 and 22 weeks. Please ask your midwife if you haven’t received these.