Laurie,

You wrote "How do you all reconcile the mind-jogging information that
breastfed babies do not actually increase their volume of milk intake
over the months? I figure if babies are breastfeeding ad libitum
(unrestricted) that they 'engineer' the calorie count based on their
frequency of feeding."

I have posted on this before-see notes from 4-16-96 and 1-10-02 in the
archives. (I toss off this recommendation blithely.never having actually
FOUND anything in the archives myself!) If you can't find these, I'm
happy to send them.

I like your term "engineer." It makes the baby sound so competent!  I
tell moms "the baby's nursing pattern may change while she is adjusting
your milk supply to meet her needs." Same thing.

It is counter-intuitive that babies DON't take in lots more milk as they
grow. And it's not only the breastfeeding experts who mistakenly assumed
that was true. The experts who established the international nutritional
norms assumed it too-which maybe is one reason that "exclusive
breastfeeding for four months" recommendation has been so hard to
shake.people can't believe that babies over 4 months will grow enough on
an average intake of 25-28 ounces of human milk per day.

In a note posted 1-4-99 I told about a pump client of mine whose
non-nursing (petite) baby grew fine on 19 ounces a day through her first
year. After the milk supply was established, mom pumped three times a
day. If she pumped more times, she got more milk but the baby couldn't
eat it-just spit up the excess. I figure there must be more babies like
this out there, balancing the kids who take 32 oz a day or more, in
order to yield that average daily milk production of 25-28 oz.

Although we know that human mothers (like any other mammal mother) can
breastfeed just fine never knowing how much the baby takes, our
bottle-feeding US culture may make it necessary for us to give them the
information about the quantity of human milk that the normal baby
requires. We have to be able to counter the abnormal example of
formula-fed babies, which is what our mothers (unfortunately) see all
around them. Not to mention all of the bottle babies who are being
over-fed!

Why is it that a baby sucking on a 6-ounce bottle of formula looks right
to a new mom, and a baby who comes to the breast six times in four hours
looks wrong?  I think we need a paradigm shift!

Chris Mulford, RN, IBCLC
LLL Leader Reserve
working for WIC in South Jersey (Eastern USA)
Co-coordinator, Women & Work Task Force, WABA



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