>pat asks "Now the dilemma.  Can she increase her supply to make enough for
>"at least 2 feedings at breast per day" or does she need to work on
>increasing supply in general, get the supply up, and then sort of wean down
>to the feedings she wants to keep?"


Laurie replied:

>
>hi pat,
>in my experience this mother will not be successful only doing 2 bf/day. the
>baby is quite young at 4wks, and the mother has been doing quite alot of
>supplementing, so she has never really established a good supply it seems.
>she gives alot of supplement after bf and one day even skipped bf altogether
>and i guess did not get engorged. the milk transfer was .5 oz and baby
>sometimes takes 5 oz!
>i guess anything is possible but i think this baby will very soon be
>refusing to bf altogether and be completely on formula.


This is absolutely my experience with mothers, too.  It seems you
can't 'put an order in' to the breasts to make only a very limited
amount of milk in this way....or at least you can, but the price you
pay is that milk production overall just dwindles away to nothing and
bf ceases. This isn't only physiologcal, I don't think - like Laurie
says, these babies often start to refuse the (relatively
unproductive) breast, and also the mother starts to top up more and
more with formula, never having the confidence she has enough at any
individual feed.

I agree with Laurie that anything is possible - occasionally,  I come
across a mother who has had this sort of haphazard approach to bf and
she still has milk several weeks down the line, and sometimes, she's
bf her baby at night and only occasionally bf in the day.  But the
mothers who succeed at this aren't skipping whole days.

 From what Pat says, I suspect this mother has hardly any milk left.
If she had, she would have felt extremely uncomfortable on the day
she didn't bf or express at all.

If she wants to keep her options open, she will need to relactate.

It's a shame. I think this might well be a mother who tells others
she couldn't bf because she 'never made enough milk'.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc,  UK

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html