Hi all I want to make another distinction in this discussion. Seems to me that we are getting distracted by research that demonstrates that it impossible to accurately estimate the volume of milk (ie the number of cc's) transferred simply by watching an infant feeding at the breast. I would never dispute those findings (seems a no-brainer to me). What I am trying to point out is that it is possible to know with a high degree of confidence whether or not a baby is getting enough milk without knowing how many mls he swallows. I would never try to guess the volume taken by an infant because I cannot see how that information is relevent, given the Hartmann team findings about storage capacity and 24 hr intake. Peter Hartmann's research team here in Aus found huge deviations between exclusively breastfeeding dyads in 24 hr intake. 'normal milk production would be 830 ± 195 g (mean ± s.d.) giving a normal range of 440—1220 g (mean ± 2 s.d.)'. JACQUELINE C. KENT *, LEON MITOULAS, DAVID B. COX, ROBYN A. OWENS † and PETER E. HARTMANN, BREAST VOLUME AND MILK PRODUCTION DURING EXTENDED LACTATION IN WOMEN, Experimental Physiology (1999), 84, 435—447. Would we all be OK sending a mother home whose baby was taking 440g of milk in 24hrs at 4wks. Yet this is, for some babies, enough. Would we trust our qualitative observations that all is well in a case where the baby was only taking 440g or would the scales tell us authoritatively that this baby needed ABM? So what I am trying to get at is that while accurate test-weighing may well tell me how many mls a baby swallows, it will not tell me if that number reflects sufficient intake for that baby. I hear that no-one uses this measure in isolation but I also hear that the scales are the final word on sufficiency of intake. The current wisdom about how much is enough, seems to mirror the intakes of artificially fed infants - intake that according to the Hartmann research would be twice what some breastfed infants need to thrive. Does this lead to unecessary supplementation? (Importantly, in a related study, they came to this conclusion "the breast can rapidly change its rate of milk synthesis from one interfeed interval to the next. This is a newly discovered property of the human mammary gland. In the past, it has been assumed (Russo & Russo, 1987) that the rate of milk synthesis of a breast could change significantly only over a period of days." SE Daly, RA Owens and PE Hartmann The short-term synthesis and infant-regulated removal of milk in lactating women Exp Physiol 1993;78;209-220.) Nina Berry BA/Bed(Hons) Dip Arts(Phil) Breastfeeding Counsellor PhD Candidate - "Ethical Issues in the marketing of 'Toddler Milks'" *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html