How to switch on your baby's six-million-year-old breastfeeding reflexes (and why this might not be enough on its own)
Switching on your newborns's mammalian reflexes
"My breast knows more than I do." Kate Llewellyn, quoted in Alison Bartlett, Thinking through breasts 2000
The realization that a baby has innate mammalian reflexes which help her move towards her mother's breast and breastfeed has been the most important advance in our understanding of breastfeeding over the past few decades. We Homo sapiens are placental mammals: warm-blooded, back-boned animals whose females incubate their young inside their bodies, and who birth their young live (not covered by an egg shell). Placental mammals secrete milk from specialised glands to nourish their little one until she is old enough to eat from the environment.
Suckling, from both an evolutionary and neuroscience perspective, is the most important event in the newborn's world.
The hardwired primitive reflexes of the human newborn are ancient responses to her sensory motor experience of the world, ensuring she is able to find and take milk from her mothers' breast.
What are your baby's ancient mammalian reflexes?
You'll soon notice your baby's startle reflex, which stiffens and jerks your newborn's little body away from any sudden, threatening stimulus. Your newborn also comes with five other inbuilt bodily reflexes, which propel her to the breast.
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Pressure on baby's cheeks stimulates the oral searching reflex, so that baby turns towards that pressure and opens her mouth.
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Planting or smooshing baby's face against your upper breast stimulates a head-bobbing reflex, so that baby lifts her face away from your body and bounces her little head down onto the breast, often accompanied by a side-bend.
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Pressure on your baby's feet stimulates a crawling or stepping reflex, by which she pushes herself up from your tummy to the breast.
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Touch on your baby's lower lip stimulates a gape reflex, so that your baby's mouth opens.
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Pressure on your baby's fingers or palms stimulates a grasping reflex of her hands, which helps her cling to you and orient herself to your breast.
A newborn takes her time. She needs to inhale your scent and the scent of your nipple. Her little tongue tastes and licks and explores. The patting of those tiny hands on your breast orients her. The scent of your nipple and areola and the visual landmark of your nipple on the breast also beckon your baby. This is how her breastfeeding reflexes switch on.
Suckling is a primordial form of sensory motor nourishment
Once baby's mouth locates your nipple, with that little tongue sensing and tasting and licking, once your nipple is inside her lips and contacting the inside of the baby's mouth and palate, sensory nerve endings activate a reflex drop of her jaw.
Suckling is deeply biologically comforting for a baby. The soothing motor rhythmicity of suckling and her satisfaction as all her senses engage in interactions with your body dial down her 'flight-or-fight' sympathetic nervous system.
Soon, tiny amounts of colostrum begin to coat your baby's gut and switch on the 'rest and digest' parasympathetic nervous system.
From an evolutionary perspective, this whole-body sensory motor enjoyment of breastfeeding is a foundational and endlessly repeated context in which your baby's sensory-motor development flourishes over the months to come. Growth and nutrition, though vital, are just one aspect of the breastfeeding ecosystem.
Physiological initiation of breastfeeding is often not enough to protect from breastfeeding problems
But recovery of this ancient cultural knowledge about how to switch on baby's breastfeeding reflexes is not enough to help many women in our society today breastfeed successfully.
Skin-to-skin contact and laid-back breastfeeding, also known as biological nurturing or baby-led or baby-led/mother-responsive breastfeeding, do not ensure easy enjoyable breastfeeding for many women and their babies. A woman may still find herself dealing with dreadful nipple pain, or a baby who fusses at the breast, or a newborn who has inadequate weight gain.
That is, for many, laid-back or baby-led breastfeeding or biological nurturing still results in positional instability for the baby or nipple and breast tissue drag for the mother. I developed up the gestalt method over many years of working with breastfeeding women and their babies in the clinic, in response to the things mothers were telling me and our collaborative experimentation with the various popular fit and hold approaches available, checking out what did and didn't work and trying new things to relieve nipple pain and breastfeeding distress.
Recommended resources
How women and their babies fit together for pain free enjoyable breastfeeding.
How to help your breasts make plenty of milk from the very beginning
Selected references
Bartlett A. Thinking through Breasts: Writing Maternity. Feminist Theory. 2000;1(2):173-188.
Moore ER, Brimdyr K, Blair A. Immediate or early skin‐to‐skin contact for mothers and their healthy newborn infants. . Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2025(10):Art. No.: CD003519. DOI: 003510.001002/14651858.CD14003519.pub14651855.
Schafer R, Watson Genna C. Physiologic breastfeeding: a contemporary approach to breastfeeding initiation. Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health. 2015;60:546-553.
Svensson KE, Velandia M, Matthiesen A-ST, Welles-Nystrom BL, Widstrom A-ME. Effects of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on severe latch-on problems in older infants: a randomized trial. International Breastfeeding Journal. 2013;8:1.