>Reading about the difference in storage capacity in different women I was
>wondering if storage capacity could change/increase from one BF child to the
>next in the same woman. What I'm thinking is that with your first baby your
>capacity grows with the growing demands of the baby, so if you had a small
>capacity to start with, maybe it increased with growing demands of the baby
>with each growth spurt. Then with a second baby, there would be a bigger
>capacity to start with. This may be more likely if you didn't quit nursing
>at all, or for long, between babies. This would help to explain why a second
>child could go much longer between feedings than the first, and also could
>get more milk faster and so finish faster.

Have you actually found the last sentence of your post to be true? I had
not heard of this before - interesting. Could it be also to do with the
baby (perhaps second baby was more placid and efficient and preferred
fewer, larger feeds) rather than it being caused by changes in mother? Just
wondering.

To comment on the earlier part of your post, Peter Hartmann's studies in
Perth, Australia, have found that a baby's overall intake does *not*
actually increase that much over time. Observation shows that babies do
seem to have growth spurts when they suddenly want more milk, but after
these, it seems that their intake drops back to what it was before. (A bit
like older children suddenly wanting more for a few days, and just as you
stock up the cupboard, they just as quickly go back to eating less again!!)
I don't think the storage capacity would be likely to change in an
individual mother, but I don't really know.

Joy Anderson IBCLC, NMAA Breastfeeding Counsellor
Perth, Western Australia
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