Rowena suggests milk is ' more free flowing at night' - this is a new one
on me....we know the prolactin levels are higher at night (in the early
days of bf, only, though, as prolactin levels are back at pre-pregnancy
levels by six months acc. to BF the Physiological Basis) but prolactin
makes the milk, not the flow.

However I have many, many times counselled women whose babies have been
hard to feed in the day but beautifully easy to feed at night - in fact,
when I get a call from a mother who says her baby has started to fuss at
the breast, I ask what he's like in the night and I would guess nine times
out of 10 I'm told he feeds efficiently and luxuriantly, falling back to
sleep without a problem.  This is similar to the 'half nursing strike' we
have been discussinhg here on the list.

I have always tended to think of this as a behavioural thing -  i) the baby
is distracted in the day, or ii) has just got to the stage where he feeds
so quickly in the day it's all over in five minutes and the mother thinks
'he can't possibly have finished...' and starts a fight to try and get him
on again (with predictable fussy results).  The situation often improves if
the mother i) tries to feed somewhere quiet or even lying down in the day,
too ii) accepts he only wants short feeds in the day

But could it be the milk actually does 'flow more freely' at night?  Is
there real evidence for this, *beyond the fact* the mother and baby might
both be more relaxed?

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK