Dear Barbara and others

This is definitely a case of n=1 but I believe i have an overactive MER but
not a problem with supply (not anymore anyway). My daughter is now 7 weeks
and I definitely did have an oversupply, coupled with a baby with a short
superior labial frenulum. Thus latch has to be good if not perfect for
things to go smoothly (I kept getting mastitis until I asked an LC to take a
look - problem solved within an hour and no mastitis since!). Anyway, my MER
is very painful (sometimes I find myself using breathing exercises to get
through it) and I believe very forceful even when my breast feel 'empty and
more saggy' in the evenings. Infact I had one of those regulating days where
she wanted to drink far more than usual, my breasts felt extremely 'empty',
but still, the MER was strong enough for her to go into 'protect herself
from choking mode' which she does during the MER (she pulls back towards the
nipple and uses her tongue to reduce the stream, when the first MER is over
we latch on again for the rest of the feed). Thus we have two latch
techniques, a shallow one for the MER and a deep one for after the first
MER.

It also seems that the MER has become stronger with every child (again n=1).
I'd be interested to know if this occurs in women generally??
I don't know much about oxytocin and its receptors in the myoepith. cells
but I'm wondering whether they become more sensitive to oxytocin (i.e.
increase in number) with subsequent babies? If so, do the myoepith. cells
themselves increase in size? Is there a genetic factor to maybe the number
of receptors? Or is it the amout of oxytocin that is produced that makes for
a more forceful MER. And what controls the amount of oxytocin released -
could it be that having more children around means more oxytocin???

Actually speaking of MER's I'm constantly finding that many women telling me
they just don't feel the MER at all. The other day I observed a friends baby
drinking at the breast beautifully swallowing (you could see his eyes 'light
up' as he began swallowing rigorously) who had clearly had a good feed but
who's mother just did not feel the MER, I could see it by the way he was
swallowing so actively. When I'm told that they don't feel any MER though, I
tend to keep it in the back of my mind as a 'red flag' for latch problems.
But is it really the case that some women just don't feel the MER?

Interested to here any other theories,

Sara Bernard
The Netherlands

             ***********************************************
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