. My
> second thought is that many mothers schedule their baby's feedings or do
> not nurse enough times during the day. I get a lot of calls from moms
> with "low milk supply" or non-gaining older babies and they are only
> nursing 5 times in 24 hours. This isn't the case from what you said, but
> is something to consider with other mothers.
>
> Kathy Eng, BSW, IBCLC
>

My observations with this "late-onset low milk supply" are that it happens 
most often with mothers who are "scheduling" or restricting feedings from 
quite early on (and frankly that is a fairly large percentage of mothers, 
because the idea that babies should eat every four hours, and that night 
feedings should be eliminated as soon as possible, is very, very common). I 
think the babies coast at first on the mother's oversupply or abundant milk, 
but that in time the milk production down-regulates to below what the baby 
needs.

I know of one mother who had no milk supply issues with her first two 
children, then got involved with one of the programs that encouraged 
scheduling feedings and teaching the baby to sleep all night. With that 
baby, she ran into serious milk supply problems by 3 or 4 months, and ended 
up adding solids and other milks, and still had a very slow-gaining baby. 
She's now had another baby and, I'm glad to say, ditched the program.

As a LLL Leader, I'm fortunate to be able to see many of these babies as 
they grow. When I see a mother who is feeding truly "ad lib" (with the baby 
nursing half a dozen times during a typical 2 or 3 hour meeting), I can be 
pretty confident that she isn't coming back with milk supply or FTT problems 
a few months later. On the other hand, if the mother feeds just once during 
the meeting, then uses a pacifier, jiggling in the car seat, walking and 
patting, etc., to hold the baby off the rest of the time, I'm not at all 
surprised when she comes a couple of months later with low milk production 
(not that it happens every time, but it happens often enough that I can 
recognize the pattern). I see this even though both babies may be gaining 
well when they are small.

Teresa Pitman 

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html