Hours after Alex was delivered by C-Section, I lay gasping on a hospital bed still trying to comprehend how I’d been flayed like a cod fish and robbed of the precious living cargo that had roomed within me for nearly nine months when the nurse arrived with my newborn and jammed his mouth over my tender nipple like a woodsman firmly planting an axe.

On his first “latch”, Alex’s bite force felt like the “lethal banana teeth” of a freshly hatched T-Rex.

I’m sure people on the street heard my pitiful scream as I waited for the visual fireworks of agony to subside. This new brand of post natal torture pumped up the volume on my synaptic receptors with a violent suddenness that left me an octave short of leaping for the window ledge.

Mercifully a ministering angel arrived in the form of lactation consultant Marianne Brophy who floated into the room with the soothing reassurance of a Red Cross nurse at the Battle of the Mammaries.

Her almost supernal wisdom in the ageless bonding of mother and child and gentle, expert guidance marked a milk-shed moment in my life as a mother.

I was later to learn that I was far from universally singled out for lactating greatness. Midlife moms are cutting a distinguishing swathe in the nursing business.

With looming menopause, and feminist backlash against breastfeeding, you might assume that fewer midlife moms (having been weaned on the feminist equal rights ethic) would nurse.

In fact, the opposite is true.

According to a recently published survey from the Public Health Agency of Canada, new moms over the age of 40 are more likely to nurse than the average mother—over 90% initiated breast feeding between 2007 and 2008.

It supports the old adage that age begets wisdom. (Or, rather, is it determination being begot?)

From vital colostrum (packed with antibodies) to enhanced bonding through hormone-stimulated receptivity to baby’s cues, it is widely acknowledged that nursing nurtures wellness to wellbeing.

But the long arm of nursing reaches even further, extracting the gold standard of post natal wellness from the baby teeth of scientific research. A 2007 California study showed that, although women giving birth after 35 are at increased risk for breast cancer, this applied only to those who did not breastfeed.

However, for moms in front lines on the maternity wards, the end of a day’s hard labor inspires only common sense. Equality is a social issue that can be defended and fought for in the cloisters of academia or in HR departments, or in feature articles that generate controversy and media hype.

In the meantime, while the “to feed or not to feed” debate rages, almost every mother will give her kid the elixir of life if she possibly can. Hands down.

Brophy highlights the need for a stronger infrastructure supporting onset of nursing (a most tender and vital beginning) in hospitals and maternity care facilities. Health professionals need to be teed up on the tricks of the trade, in order to grasp the fleeting opportunity for success.

However, there is still a tide of social censure on breastfeeding mothers and this is compounded with midlife moms—the whole idea of granny-aged nursing moms flies in the face of the popular dewy-eyed Venus-de Milo-style-image of a young mother with her baby at the breast.

And this further puts us at risk of making the lame assumption that any challenge to nursing for over 40 moms must be due to age.

Lisa Cohn, a fifty-two year old mother from Oregon who is currently nursing her 15 month old son may be a case in point. Cohn, who had her first two children at 31 and 41 by vaginal delivery was “overflowing with milk” following those pregnancies.

However, when she gave birth to her third child by Caesarean at 51, it was hard getting started and the baby slept a lot. It took months of working with a lactation consultant before they could go with the flow.

Cohn, an author who specializes in parenting and environment, wasn’t sure if the problem was caused by her being an older mom.

Marianne Brophy argues that age has no bearing on our ability to nurse. “Interventions such as caesarean section or labor medications may cause mother and baby to get off to a slow start” she says.

In the end, Mother Nature presides over birth and nursing with her system of checks and balances that have been in place since the beginning of humanity.

Once a woman has conceived and given birth, what’s age got to do with it?

Around the same time as the peak of the fussy period, most babies start to have a real, joyful, social smile. Again, we see the balance of parenting.

By now, babies are clearly tuned in socially. They have started to become fascinated with their own hands, staring at them as they slowly turn them over. But the human face remains more fascinating than anything else. This is especially true of their parents’ faces.

Babies can already recognize their parents on videotape and determine if the voice and video are just a bit out of synch. They also tend to respond differently when they see their mothers (comforted and calm) and when they see their fathers (perky and playful). (When they see strangers, they go from bright-eyed to bored.) They react differently if you are smiling or frowning.

Your baby has learned to try to get your attention with gurgles, coos, and body movements. Now she is able to reward you with a genuine smile when you connect in a way that brings her delight. You can recognize these smiles because the cheeks rise (called a Duchenne smile) or the mouth opens (an open-mouth smile); in moments of sheer joy, the mouth opens and the cheeks rise.

Smiles may not be frequent yet, but once you’ve experienced your baby smiling at you, you will be motivated to learn all the ways you can make her do it again. And she will be busy learning how to make you smile.

Yes, this is the fussy phase, but it is also the dawning of days of delight.

This is an excerpt from: From First Kicks to First Steps: Nurturing Your Babys Development from Pregnancy Through the First Year of Life, McGraw-Hill, 2004, pp. 238 . 239

Babies have a deep body memory. Your baby remembers the foods you ate when you were pregnant. She remembers the foods you ate while nursing her. She will remember the foods she sees you eat now.

She will also remember interactions. An interesting study from St. Francis Xavier University and Yale University introduced babies (at the starting-solids age) to two different strangers on video screens. One stranger on the screen could see and hear the baby and interacted directly (what we call a contingent interaction). The other stranger was a tape replay of that person interacting with another baby (a warm, but noncontingent interaction). Babies were much more interested in the one interacting with them personally. No surprise. But a week later, they still preferred that person, even if both strangers were now responsive. Babies prefer and remember interactions in which someone is paying attention to their cues.

The same thing is true with babies. toys. Select toys where the play value is in response to your baby’s actions, rather than just acting on their own. We call these .contingent toys.. These are more fun, last longer, and support your baby’s development.

This is an excerpt from: From First Kicks to First Steps: Nurturing Your Babys Development from Pregnancy Through the First Year of Life, McGraw-Hill, 2004, p. 283

Most babies with hearing loss are not diagnosed until they are 1½ to 3 years old, unless a routine screening hearing test is done. These simple tests are recommended for all babies. However, about 1 out of 3 babies in the U.S. did not receive a screening hearing test during the last full year of data, according to the October 17, 2003 issue of MMWR published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There is a gap in screening. There is also a gap in treatment. Of those babies found to have a hearing problem during newborn screening, 1 out of 5 did not receive the treatment they needed when it would help the most.

The CDC recommends that all babies be screened using the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention 1-3-6 approach.  Every baby should have a screening hearing test before 1 month of age. If the results of the screening test are suspicious, babies should have a complete hearing evaluation by age 3 months. Whenever there is proven hearing loss, treatment should be begun before the baby is 6 months old.

Has your baby or toddler had a normal hearing screening test?  If you’re not certain, find out. Earlier treatment helps to maximize a child’s language skills. No matter how old a child is, it’s better to begin now than to wait.