At least a couple of posters (Nikki and Debra) have already said some of
what I am going to reiterate, which is WATCH THE BABY.  This will be more
useful than advice involving numbers, be it ONE breast at a feed or TWO
breasts at a feed or at least THREE hourly feeds or no more than TWENTY
minutes, or alternatively, at least twenty minutes on ONE side.  I will go
so far as to say that mentioning numbers activates the entirely wrong part
of the brain for parenting and gives parents the impression that babies are
all the same, breasts are all the same, and feeds are all the same, and
there is a simple numerical rule about timing or amounts for feeds that
always works.  Besides, we don't even define feeds the same way.  Is it a
new feed whenever the baby switches sides, or does some amount of time have
to elapse between breasts for it to be a new feed?  How do we tell parents
what the right number of feeds is for any given time interval?

Does there have to be a burp for a feed to be over?  And do any of you see
exclusively breastfed babies who actually burp in the first three days of
life?  I can't remember last time I saw a breastfed baby who did, only
cup-fed or bottle-fed ones. In fact, there is one question asked by nine of
ten new parents coming back to our clinic: S/he isn't burping, what should
we do? Can we move the sleeping, satiated breastfed baby from mother's arms
to some other surface before it has burped?  I tell them burping is not
mandated by law and not all new babies do it. Never seen a baby get
readmitted for aspiration pneumonia for lack of burping nor any other
reason, to this day.

And don't even get me started on the foremilk/hindmilk debate. Not in the
mood to Go There Today.

No book, or consultation, or tear-off sheet, or neighbor's mother-in-law,
will ever be able to give advice that is tailored to every feeding episode
for every baby. That's why it's so fabulous that babies are their very own
user manuals.  

On-cue feeding is one cornerstone of breastfeeding, along with positioning
and attachment. Feeding on cue means watching the baby and offering one, or
two, or a continuous series of breasts, depending on what the baby tells
you.  It's more time-consuming to sit with a mother through a very early
feeding episode the way Debra describes than to hand her a folder or recite
a bunch of numbers, but at the end of it she will probably know enough to
get her through the first week, and if she manages that, she can probably
breastfeed until the child moves into its own apartment.  A baby who doesn't
communicate its needs, or parents who ignore them, should arouse concern on
so many levels that feeding would be the least of my worries. 

Disclaimer: I have a strong allergy to dealing with the kind of question
that starts off with a long account of how many minutes a baby has suckled
per side, and at what intervals, since birth, before getting to the heart of
the matter which is usually something about an unhappy baby and frustrated
parents, who are sure they have been doing everything *right* down to the
letter, or, in these cases, the number.  I react by some cross-allergy
mechanism to gizmos to help mothers remember which breast to feed from, like
bracelets, because I myself would have needed a personal assistant to keep
track of whether I had remembered to move the bracelet, but I never had the
slightest difficulty figuring out which breast to feed from.  My iron-clad
rule for that is, if you can't feel which breast is fuller, use whichever
d*** breast you want to.

Rachel Myr
Steeling myself for a night shift tonight, and thinking that if you are out
in a swamp where the map says there should be a mountain, it's probably not
the swamp that is mistaken
Kristiansand, Norway

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