How Your Baby Mammal Sleeps & Starts Solids

Last week, for the first part of this two part series with Diane Wiessinger, we discussed mammal behavior and instincts surrounding birth and lactation. In this episode we’ll talk about how your mammal baby sleeps, and starts eating solids, as well as the non-event of weaning from nursing. Go listen.

(Check out part 1 here)

What we talked about:

• Why mammals sleep together
• Guidelines for safe bedsharing (Diane even gives us a song!)
• To swaddle or not to swaddle?
• How and when to easily introduce solids
• Solids are for fun during the first year
• Baby-led weaning to diminish allergies
• When do human mammals wean from nursing?
• The evolution of lactation as your child ages

Resources on sleep, introducing solids and weaning:

• The Safe Sleep Seven, from La Leche League International
• Co-sleeping and Bed-sharing info and resources, from KellyMom.com
• Baby-led Weaning: The fuss-free way to introduce solid foods, Gill Rapley’s website
• A Time to Wean, by Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.

Books by Diane, and others that she recommends*:

• The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
• Sweet Sleep: Nighttime and Naptime Strategies for the Breastfeeding Family
• The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth, by Henci Goer
• Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices, by Sarah Buckley
• Breastfeeding Made Simple: Seven Natural Laws for Nursing Mothers, by Nancy Mohrbacher and Kathleen Kendall-Tackett

Courtesy of Diane Wiessinger

About Diane Wiessinger

Diane Wiessinger [I sing, you sing, we singer] has been a La Leche League Leader since 1985 and an IBCLC since 1990.  Although she studied animal behavior for her Master’s degree, she still timed her first baby’s feeds with a stopwatch. It took her a quarter century for her to understand that our infants are just standard mammalian newborns in human packaging.  She nearly walked out on her first La Leche League meeting, thinking, “There is more to me than this.”  But one thing led to another, and she found herself becoming first a La Leche League Leader and later an IBCLC in private practice.   She now speaks on the connection between our mammalian heritage and our birth and breastfeeding experiences, as well as on our breastfeeding language and how mothers and babies make breastfeeding work.  Her writings include co-authorship of the eighth edition of La Leche League International’s The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, 8th edition, and Sweet Sleep: Nighttime and Naptime Strategies for the Breastfeeding Family.  It turns out, after all these years, that there isn’t much more to her than breastfeeding.  However, her conference speaking has allowed her to ride a camel, watch kangaroos on a golf course, eat a dish called “drunken chicken”, and use a squat toilet successfully.  Diane has two grown sons, two lovely daughters-in-law, and four bright and breastfed grandchildren.