If you and your baby are well with no medical concerns, place your baby on your chest for at least an hour of skin-to-skin contact within five minutes after delivery. Your baby's suckling reflex is most intense in the first hour after birth. Being close to each other after sharing the birth experience helps your baby to calm down, keeps him or her warm and encourages him or her to breastfeed. Guide your baby when he or she shows signs of readiness to feed.

It will help to avoid the nipple confusion for babies, diminish postpartum breast engorgement, support uterus contract, and stimulate breastmilk production.  In situations where you are unable to breastfeed your baby directly, you can still provide your baby with breast milk by expressing as soon as possible. Expressing helps to initiate and establish lactation. It also helps to relieve blocked ducts. If your breast is engorged, expressing some milk will help to relieve the discomfort and enable your baby to grasp the areola properly.

For the first 2-4 days after giving birth, a new mother's breasts will start to produce milk and you will experience firm and swollen breasts, and veins become visible as well when breasts engorged with milk.

When you first start breastfeeding, your first milk is colostrum which is:

• Yellow, thick and sticky, very rich in protein, minerals and antibodies.
• Small in quantity, but that is all your baby needs in the first few days. Breast milk changes to mature milk by about 7 -10 days after birth.

Mature breast milk consists of:

• The initial foremilk which is watery, low in fat and serves to satisfy the baby’s thirst.
• The later hindmilk, which contains more fat, calories, nutrients and antibodies, and will satisfy the baby’s hunger and ensure weight gain.

Reference: Healthhub, KKH