>  How does Daly, et al's research a
>few years back on breast storage capacity tie in to the discussion of
>"over"supply or does it?  Are primarily larger-breasted women the ones
>"afflicted" with abundant supplies given their larger storage
>capacities?  It seems from the anecdotes here that the problem doesn't
>disappear in some women regardless of the way the breastfeeding dyad
>works together...  Is the rate of milk synthesis the "problem" vs the
>total volume produced?

I'm not sure if Peter and his students have specifically looked at
mothers with chronic oversupply (don't think so) but one hypothesis I
can think of is that some mothers have less well-controlled autocrine
feedback, ie the inhibitor in the milk is supposed to cut back the
milk synthesis rate, dependent on the degree of breast emptiness.
Perhaps it doesn't inhibit it quite enough. And if the mother
expresses, then this would be likely to further 'mess up the system'
as it would remove a bit more of the inhibitor. (I'm not advocating
that mothers not express for comfort - merely looking at it from a
theoretical point of view.)

> Per Hartmann, again, Australian women do seem to
>yield more milk than their US counterparts.  It would seem that the
>diets of the two countries would not be significantly different and I
>would guess that breast sizes are fairly similar as well.  My curiosity
>is piqued...

This difference could be accounted for by different measuring
methods, ie an artefact. Peter and his students measure the amount of
milk taken by the baby by measuring the changes in the shape of the
breast (ie volume of the breast) and by weighing the *mother* (not
the baby). He has found good correlations in these methods. I don't
believe that Australian mothers really do make more milk than those
in other countries.


> If Daly and Hartmann's supply and demand
>research is the latest and greatest, are practitioners using their
>concepts or are we simply telling mothers to "nurse frequently for 24-48
>hours to up your supply to meet baby's needs"?

One intriguing point they have found is that the *volume* of milk
produced per 24 hours for a thriving baby, between 1 and 6 months is
*constant*. They found this when looking for correlation of prolactin
levels and milk production (there was no real correlation - prolactin
levels fell over time, but milk production stayed the same).

Well that totally blew our theory about 'growth spurts' or 'appetite
increases' being there to increase the baseline milk production, or
babies increasing their needs as they grew! The only explanation I
can come up with now is that the baby has a 'feeding frenzy' for a
few days and then goes back to having the amount he had before. This
also lends support to Pamela's theory of a dip in the milk supply
causing the baby to want to feed more frequently. It is true that
*sustained* increased frequency of 'breast emptying' does reset the
level of supply, but not, it seems, these couple of days of the
'feeding frenzy'.
******************************************************************
Joy Anderson B.Sc. Dip.Ed. Grad.Dip.Med.Tech. IBCLC
Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia Breastfeeding Counsellor
Perth, Western Australia.   mailto:[log in to unmask]
******************************************************************

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