Dear Lacnetters,

I'm still getting my head around prolactin / milk production etc. But one
thing springs to my mind. Here, mothers are often told by mother-baby carers
NOT to express milk to relieve engorgement in the first week or so (they are
if baby isn't drinking from breats of course!).  The reason being that it
just drives engorgement and milk production.
But reading the posts and some of Cregan / Hartmanns work, it seems that
emptying breast that are engorged is actually sound advice because it
preserves future milk production. This aside from the fact that a mother can
latch a hungry baby easier to a "empty" breast and give him or her a really
good high fat feed + plus the relief it gives to the mother!
My other reasoning is that when the milk 'comes in' in the first week, milk
producting is endocrine driven, so expressing milk is may not have an
increasing effect until the autocrine mechanism begins to take over. Am I on
the right track????

Is there any empiracle evidence to suggest that mothers who had severe
engorgement in the first week, also had problems with milk supply down the
line (despite having perfect latching babies)?

And why does frequent feeding before the milk comes in make the likely hood
of severe engorgement less?? This is something you read everywhere, but I'd
like to know the reason why (even if it's theoretical).

Ha, I hope I've got you thinking ;-0

Sara Bernard
The Netherlands
(ps I'm glad I took the trouble to empty my breast every morning for about 4
days in the first week!)

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