I think there are several reasons women resist frequent feeding. Often it is
because they have been told over the years that babies should only feed
every four hours or every three hours or some other schedule. They may be
told that feeding the baby more often will spoil him, or increase his risk
of being obese. Or they imagine that each of these frequent feedings will
last as long as their current feedings, so they'll be nursing 40 minutes
every hour and that seems impossible.

I do find that it is often helpful for these mothers to come to a LLL
meeting. There they see mothers who are nursing their babies throughout the
meeting, and there are always some who nurse for two or minutes, stop, look
around, get a diaper changed, nurse again, doze off for twenty minutes,
nurse again, etc. They can see how the mothers are able to carry on with
what they are doing with brief pauses to nurse the baby, and how easy and
relaxing this can be for everyone.

I agree that currently many mothers resist the idea of nursing their babies
more frequently. But I think it is important for us to keep talking about it
and encouraging it and planting the idea that this is normal.

I recently interviewed Dr. Nicolas Stettler, who conducted a big research
study showing that babies who gained weight rapidly in the first four months
were more likely to be obese as children. His study was almost entirely
bottle-fed babies, though. He told me that he believes the best way for
parents to reduce the risk of obesity is to exclusively breastfeed for six
months, then gradually introduce solids while continuing to breastfeed. He
added - and this is the point that connects to the frequent feeding - that
he thinks it is the self-regulation aspect of breastfeeding that is
important in preventing obesity more than the milk itself. Breastfed babies
take as much or as little milk as they want at each feeding, and that can
vary dramatically from one feeding to the next. He stressed that it is very
important for the mother to respond to the baby's cues, because that
reinforces the baby's learning to respond to his inner signals. You want
your baby to know that when he feels hungry, he should eat, and when he
stops feeling hungry, he should stop eating. If the baby feels he has to
stock up on lots of food because it could be a long time before the next
feeding, you could be setting a pattern leading to overeating and obesity.

I thought his comments were very interesting!

Teresa Pitman
Guelph, Ontario

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