Speaking from personal experience here, not as someone who studies growth, I
would say that I always knew when my son was having a growth spurt because
he go from nursing every 1-2 hours to nursing almost continuously and
fussing a lot at the breast, seeming to be frustrated that there wasn't
enough milk to satisfy him at one sitting.  The next day, or the second day,
I would have *noticeably* more milk -- breasts fuller, firmer, heavier,
spurting at let-down again when they hadn't for several weeks, return of the
*tingling* feeling with let-down when I hadn't felt it for several weeks --
and he would go back to contentedly nursing once an hour or so, acting quite
full and lethargic when he was done, and I could tell that my milk supply
had clearly increased.  Now, that doesn't mean that it permanently became
higher -- over the next few days, as he nursed at his "old" rate, the
symptoms of a larger supply would fade away again, until the next spurt.
Following Michele Lampl's careful work on the non-linearity of early
childhood growth (described earlier on Lactnet, babies don't grow slowly and
steadily on a day-to-day basis, they stay the same, then "spurt" up very
quickly -- when measured once a month, it looks slow and steady) -- I would
say that children exhibit these days of trying to increase the milk supply
either right before, during, or after (or maybe all three) a growth spurt as
described by Michelle Lampl.  I think the *only* way Dr. Hartmann would be
able to detect this would be through careful day-to-day observations and
measurements of a mother's breasts as she was experiencing this.  I think it
is such a transient thing -- usually only a day or two when baby is
drastically increasing their nursing frequency, that it would be very
difficult to detect clinically.

IMHO, as always.


Kathy Dettwyler