> Sarah, I know just what you mean about having no idea how often the baby eats
> -- I feek that way now with #3.  Recently just from curiosity I tried to
> reconstruct how many times she had nursed the previous day and found I just
> couldn't do it.

I think this illustrates a very good point with regard to feeding frequency
and that is exactly how do we measure it? It all depends on your definition
of a breastfeed. Some women may feed from one breast at at sitting, others
may take their babies off for a little while, to burp, change nappies or to
attend a toddler or whatever, and then resume feeding, is this still one
breastfeed? or does this become two? What is the period between a baby
coming off a breast and then going back on, that makes one breastfeed become
two?  I would guess that due to personal subjectivity there are many
different perceptions out there of what makes up one breastfeed.
Incidentally for our research purposes we define one breastfeed as the
uninterrupted period spent feeding from ONE breast. If the baby goes to the
second breast this is a second breastfeed. This suits our needs for
objectively measurement driven data but may not suit other purposes. It
makes it a difficult area to quantify.

Regards
Cathy Fetherston

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