.

Here in the trenches of mommyhood and peer counseling, I see many moms using
any means possible to hold their little ones down to 8 feedings or so a day.
They didn't hear 8-12 feedings per day as the MINIMUM requirement, they heard
it as the maximum they should be "letting" baby nurse.  There is lots and
lots of jiggling, rocking ,pacifier use, early night-weaning, and protests
that the fussy baby "can't be hungry".  There is virtually none of the
"ecological nursing style" of nursing up to several times per hour,
clock-round.

Yet most of the moms I see would swear they are practicing "demand feeding".

I suspect that in my well-nourished part of the world, this style of feeding
is adequate for many, optimal for almost none, and that many otherwise
healthy slow gainers are really squeaking by on less than they would like to
eat.

The scariest thing I ever saw in this regard was as a new mother, in a
community infant-mom playgroup.  Mom was anguished at her 3-month old's poor
weight gain, was pumping  and seeing an LC.  But I never saw that scrawny
little infant without a pacifier in her mouth, and mom never came to the
playgroups dressed in any outfit that made nursing in public possible without
undressing(I only saw her nurse in public once). I would watch this
sickly-looking infant and want to rip that piece of plastic out of her mouth
and feed her myself.

Many of the child-care books and magazines available are also chock-full of
non-feeding methods to soothe cranky babies---I myself think many of these
rememdies are  the result of a bottle-feeding culture.

Lately, when I encounter new  bfeeding parents in the community, the only
un-asked for advice I give boils down to "Just assume the baby is hungry."

This is definitely a "hot-button" topic for me.

Karen Kavesh in Philadelphia

Speech-Language Pathologist, mom of 2 and(yay!)thrilled at the prospect of
resuming peer counseling.

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