I was just flipping through a 20-year-old pamphlet from the Royal College of
Midwives, and found this:

 

"Early work had suggested that milk transfer takes place rapidly in the
first few minutes of a feed.  This is now known to be a misleading picture
derived by measuring a cross section of babies feeding for different lengths
of time.  Measuring intake at repeated points during a sfeed has shown that
such a picture does not apply to individual babies." 

 

How totally cool!  In other words, earlier researchers (I didn't look up who
said what) looked at a whole bunch of babies and the total volume from them
all at various intervals, and found that most of the milk was delivered in
the early part of the feed.  Well, duh!  Some of those babies finished in 5
minutes and dumped their total intake into the early part of the curve.
Those who took small amounts slowly, took small amounts at the beginning and
small amounts at the end, so that the end of the curve showed a
significantly lower total volume.  When they looked at *one* baby, and the
amount of intake at intervals through the feed, they saw a much more even
intake.  

 

Amazing how a simple math or statistical issue can get overlooked in
someone's enthusiasm to see things a certain way.

 

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY  USA

 

 

 

 


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