I also agree with "watch the baby, not the clock" ! I have to deal with a
pediatrician who thinks he knows it all, and even tells the moms that they
will hear ME (the LC) say something different. He tells them to nurse no more
than 10 minutes, since the baby gets all it needs it that amount of time and
NOT to let the baby use mom as a pacifier.
Instead of saying that the doc is a quack (actually I have two that say this
continually to moms, who KNOW what they are talking about as their wives
breastfed all of their children), I bite my tongue and tell moms:
In the newborn stage, most babies have high suck needs. They meet these needs
as well as their nutritive ones at the breast. If moms actually pay attention
and time the baby, they will find that baby intersperses non-nutritive suck
with nutritive, so the 10-15 minutes of "eating" is mixed in with the
"hanging out". When I describe it in this way, they nod and say that they
have seen their babies do just that. (so I did not say the doc was actually
wrong...)
Then I explain that as baby grows, it will outgrow the need for the
non-nutritive suck and just need to eat. Then the baby will probably nurse
for a much shorter time as it (and the body) are more efficient at
getting/releasing milk, and the suck needs have diminished (there is where
the 10 minutes comes from).
I also explain that bottle-fed babies also have high suck needs, and since
they cannot meet them with the bottle once it is empty, they need to suck
elsewhere (fingers, etc--ergo, the pacifier was invented for them!!). As baby
grows away from needing to suck so much, if only using the breast, they will
simply cut down naturally on their suck time. However, if given a device to
suck on, this will develop into a habit that will be more difficult to break,
as suck needs give way to teething needs, and pacifier becomes the baby's
tool for that aspect.
More common sense!! Help moms to look at baby, and understand what is
actually happening rather than worrying about timing. (I also say that moms
have been nursing all around the world for millennia without clocks, bottles
or formulas, and if it did not work, the human race would have died out long
ago!)
Kathy in NJ IBCLC RN C (Maternal-infant), APN C (Family Nurse Practitioner)
PhD student hoping to study labor and lactation issues
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