Friday, in celebration of Breastfeeding Awareness Month, some of our WIC lactation team (IBCLC's and peers) joined together to give a mutual infant feeding class for pregnant mothers coming in for recertification of WIC benefits. Healthy refreshments were served afterward.

 
Each of us gave a short segment on several different aspects of infant feeding, of course emphasizing the benefits of breastfeeding, comfortable initiation of BF, services of our BF department, but including info on the mportance of knowing the safe way to reconstitute AIM,  helpfulness of baby wearing, etc. No one seemed restless, or left early, and the various kinds of literature supplied were accepted in different degrees by the mothers present. Some moms came up later privately with specific questions about their individual prenatal concerns to help get them off to a good start. It was a new experience to me, and I hope we don't reserve it for one month per year only.


However, there was one statement made (which I have seen made on some of the literature we also hand out) to the effect that "The more milk you remove, the more milk you will make."


Somehow, this disturbs me greatly, in large part because it is phrased so "simplistically" that it is easily misinterpreted, especially by mothers with no prior BF experience, no strong breastfeeding-knowledgeable support systems and/or less than, or even, high school education levels.


It seems to me that this mistakenly, perhaps automatically, whenever she may remove what she considers a small (by AIM experience) standards, leads to a mom's conclusion that she is not making (and possibly cannot make) enough milk. This too often adds to a possible downward spiral of more supplementation/less stimulation/milk suppression etc. etc. 


Would it not be much less misleading, and more realistic to phrase it: "The more OFTEN milk is removed, the more often the signal is given to the breast to speed up and keep up milk production."  Or some such phrasing. This general concept, if properly understood, could be workable for both increasing supply and explaining how this same concept can work to (inadvertenly and/or deliberately) decrease supply.


What do others think??  Am I being too picky here???


K. Jean Cotterman RNC-E, IBCLC
WIC Volunteer LC     Dayton OH

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