Starr advises putting the infant to the breast as early as six or eight hours after labour is completed, which is good for both mother and child. For the mother it improves the nipple, stimulates the true milk secretion, and reflexly the uterine contractions; for the infant it is also desirable, for it insures the ingestion of colostrum.

Colostrum constitutes the secretion of the first three days. This secretion is mildly laxative, and it cleanses the child's alimentary canal of the waste matter called meconium, which is found within it at birth.

Colostrum contains an excess of albumin, so that boiling coagulates it. It also has large corpuscles, which may be seen with the microscope throughout the first week of lactation, gradually lessening in number. They then rapidly disappear, and none should be present after a fortnight. If found later, the milk is certain to disagree and a change of nurse is necessitated.

Intervals For Feeding

Infants during the first three days should be nursed only four or five times a day. Water may be given, but no bottle food, which only upsets the stomach and lessens the ability to suck. After this period once every two hours is the proper interval for suckling for the first six weeks or two months. The child should be nursed at this interval between 5 a. m. and 11 p. m., with one feeding only in the middle of the night. If absolute regularity is always observed in the hours for nursing, the child's digestive organs keep in much better condition, it sleeps better, and is much less likely to be overfed. During the first four or five months of life an infant should be fed once during the night; after that it need not be fed between 10 p. m. and 7 a. m. When a year old, if strong and well, it need not be fed between 7 p. m. and 7 a. m. If fed or nursed oftener than this, the child receives too much food, and digestion and rest are both disturbed.

Sometimes an infant will demand milk at night and not take it in the daytime as well as it should, but with a little firmness and by starving it for a few hours until it is really hungry, it can often be trained to suckle in the manner which experience has proved is best for both itself and its mother.

From fifteen to twenty minutes is sufficient time to keep the child at the breast, and it will often doze off to sleep after nursing.

As the child grows older the intervals between the hours of nursing are to be prolonged, in accordance with the tables given below (pp. 766, 767), and the child may be allowed to remain a few moments longer at the breast.

The infant while sucking should always be held in a comfortable position with the nipple within easy reach.

After a three-hour interval for feeding has been reached, it may be maintained in many cases until lactation is completed, but after reaching six months of age some infants do better with a three and a half or four hours' interval.

Infants born with a cleft lip or palate cannot be properly nursed at the breast, for they are unable to make the necessary vacuum in the mouth to draw the milk. They may be unable to take the bottle successfully, and must then be fed by gavage or with a spoon.