>>Another reason I wanted to write something here was a snippet I learnt a
couple of weeks ago while at a talk by Prof Peter Hartmann. It was that a
baby's daily milk intake does *not* actually increase with time. I used to
give the same sort of explanation as Arly said above - that baby will need
an increasing amount of milk and "grow into" the oversupply. Also the
concept of "appetite increases" (or what used to be called "growth spurts")
also follows this increasing need assumption. In actual fact, when amounts
of milk being synthesised in mothers feeding happily growing babies at
different ages (same mothers and babies, longitudinal studies) were
measured in Peter's research work, the amounts did *not* increase, but
remained constant.<<

Joy, when I wrote awhile back on the P.H. lecture that I attended, I failed
in my efforts of recollection to include this mystery. I distinctly remember
sitting there, thinking, "Hey, wait a minute! What about growth spurts?" I
stood around forever hoping to ask him more about this, but was never able to
talk with Peter directly.  IMO, there has got to be a missing link here. We
all know about growth spurts. What Peter taught about milk supply and varying
storage capacities actually helped me to understand why some mothers notice
these spurts as "running out of milk", while other mothers seem to coast
right through them.  In the meantime, my own experience was an anomaly since
I had early oversupply but suddenly "ran out" of milk at the 3 wk growth
spurt and needed support to know that I could still make enough.

Yes, babies *do* increase their volume of intake. In fact, I believe that
there are also studies of how mother's supplies increase to a peak around 6
months, then plateau, then gradually decline as solids are introduced and
begin to replace the milk. It makes perfect sense to me! We know that a 6 lb
baby is going to need less milk than a 12 lb baby. The only other possible
variable is the actual caloric (fat?) content of the milk.  Breastmilk is
said to have an avg caloric value of 67kcal/100ml.  But, I know that the milk
that I donated for a baby 11 yrs ago "had to be diluted because it was too
rich".

Also: it has been noted by some that Australian women complain more of
"oversupply" problems while north American women complain more about
"undersupply"; could this observation, which we have loosely tied to opposite
hemispheres, be true more for one half of the world than the other? We need
more research on these variations!

-Lisa Marasco, LLLL, IBCLC
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