I feel as if Marsha's post on variations in feeding frequency and Pamela's on semantics somehow belong together.  

I breastfed Scott, my first, in a fairly Western World style.  I added nursings to help him to sleep, to comfort him, and so on, but in the early months I expected - and generally had - rather long feedings at rather long intervals.  I dealt with oversupply in those early months, he dealt with a fussy stomach, I struggled to maintain a nursery across the hall, my periods returned at 7 months or so, and he "weaned himself" late in my next pregnancy.  When he was 2 1/2, after not nursing for a week, he couldn't remember how.

I was simply too busy to nurse Eric, my second, that way.  I was a "working mother," in that my fast-moving 3-year-old first-born required a fast-moving mama.  Eric-in-arms would want to nurse and I'd plunk down on the floor, but soon I'd have to chase after his brother and would take Eric off.  I also did some editing work, bouncing back and forth between typewriter and baby.  Basically, he initiated, I terminated.  "This is a ridiculous way to nurse a baby," I thought, and started keeping track out of curiosity: for significant parts of the day, we'd nurse for 5 minutes or less, several times an hour.  I was grateful for our family bed because those drowsy night nursings represented unbroken time with him.

He gained faster than his older brother.  His stomach didn't bother him, I had no oversupply problems, and my periods returned sometime after a year.  When he was 2 1/2, I was in the hospital for 6 weeks.  He nursed once a week for those 6 weeks, forgot nothing, and went on to nurse for several more years.

How much of all this variation was cultural, how much was differences in personality, and how much was physiological?  Too small a sample size to say, of course.  I think Marsha's right to say a key feature of humans is our adaptability.  Humans are not the best swimmers, climbers, runners, feasters, or fasters, but we *can* do *any* of those things when we need to (as opposed, say, to fish, who are notoriously poor runners, or shrews, who can't fast for even half a day.)  Still, I suspect my second experience was closer to our physiological center point.  It simply went too smoothly in too many small ways - breast comfort, baby comfort, potential for child spacing, and perhaps most of all **ability of the mother to work continuously and hard**.  Half-hour nursings at 2-hour intervals may well be a modern-day luxury that *also* works, provided the mother doesn't have other ongoing interruptions.

Pamela writes,
>And we might need to 
>clearly state the mother's *and* the baby's rights in the same sentence.
>
>...the purpose of infant feeding is not merely so 
>that mothers can enjoy the experience... its ultimate purpose is to 
>have the baby survive and thrive... My plea, then, 
>is that... we keep the baby at the centre of our efforts, and don't allow 
>others to forget that he exists either.

My first experience was weighted toward the maternal right to *limited* breast access.  My second was  weighted toward the infant right to *unlimited* access.  Either one, taken to the extreme, would result in breastfeeding failure - the first from inadequate infant stimulation, the second from inadequate maternal food!  I guess it's a bell curve, with no single "correct" place on it.  Correct for any situation *has* to take into account both mother's and baby's needs, or it isn't going to work.  If mothers don't enjoy the experience, the mothers will quit.  If babies don't thrive, the mothers will quit.  Either way, the baby stands to lose more than the mother, but it's the mother who determines whether or not the relationship can continue.  It's like a ballet in which the man leads but all eyes are on the woman.  Our job is to convince one dancer to lead, so that the other can be the Leading Dancer.  Thank you, Marsha and Pamela, for keeping us aware of the complexities! 

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com 

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