Elisheva writes about the mother who is only feeding 3 x a day:

'It frustrates me when we let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and
since in this case
the choice is probably between only a bit of bf and none at all, I'd say a
little bit has got to be considered the good.'

I know what you are saying, Elisheva, that we meet the mother where she is
now and work with what she can do and feels okay about - I really agree
with that, and I am against counsels of perfection. I am happy with 'good
enough breastfeeding'  for individual mothers, even though we know that the
best *nutrition*  for the baby is something different (my colleague Hannah
Hulme Hunter has written about good enough breastfeeding - it's her phrase,
not mine. See her piece in MIDIRS recently).

But in this case the baby was *7 weeks old and the mother had never fully
bf* - with this history, her milk is highly likely to disappear unless she
takes action to feed more often , and then, she just won't have the option
of partial breastfeeding.  Okay, it won't disappear overnight, and she can
struggle on for a variable amount of time, and if the baby is happy, she
can put the baby to the breast whenever she wants for comfort...but she
needs to know the likely scenario.  If she has been feeding no more than 3
x a day for most of the seven weeks she may already be producing very
little indeed. I repeat,  3 x a day is nowhere near enough - not for
exclusive bf, not for partial bf (at this early stage). Later on, of
course, when bf is well-established and longer-standing, you can feed very
infrequently and still have a reliable and flexible supply. But my
prediction is this mother will soon end up with zero.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK