Diane writes
> Somehow I missed this.  I've been assuming that, while a large-breasted
> woman *may* have a small capacity, it's the small-breasted woman is more
> likely to be the one who gets full fast and needs to feed really often, just
> because there's less overall volume to the breast, and that the
> super-volumes are unlikely to be from the small-breasted women.  Am I wrong
> about this?
I honestly don¹t know, these sound fair assumptions to me, however we don¹t
really have "evidence" to say they are true for most women.

My points were only that you can't tell storage capacity by looking at the
size of the breasts and that mothers who have babies that need to feed
frequently should be assured that although large volumes may not be
available at each feed their babies will get enough milk over a 24 hour
period if they are allowed to demand feed.

Peter gives an example in one of his talks of two mothers who are both
producing around 900 mls milk/day.  One mother has a storage of 600mls in
one breast and only 180 in the other, with a total storage capacity of
780mls. Now if it was physiologically possible for this lucky baby he could
take almost all of his total volume required for the day in just one feed!
Another mother has a storage capacity of 110 mls in one breast and 80 mls in
the other. This baby however only has a small proportion of his total daily
volume available at any one time and must obviously take more feeds to get
it than the first baby.
 
Now I don¹t know with this particular example whether either Mum was small
or large breasted but my point is that a small"er" breasted woman (although
this is very subjective, when does a women change from being moderate to
small breasted?) could conceivably have a storage capacity close to or even
perhaps the same as the first mother and a larg"er" breasted woman could
have the second lower storage capacity. The mother with the larger Storage
Capacity however obviously has a lot more flexibility with regard to feeding
frequency (depending on how her baby likes to feed) than the second mother
who can only deliver smaller volumes per feed.

While on the subject, should any of you out there want to research the
subject of Storage Capacity - I mislead you in my last post! Storage
Capacity CAN now be calculated without having to use Computerised Breast
Measurement. From the original work using CBM the authors (Daly, Kent &
Hartmann) have now derived a formula using 24 hour Milk Production and
changes in Degree of Fullness which will give you Storage Capacity. There
was quite a bit of confusion at the lab, no one seemed sure if this has been
published however if any of you are personally interested, email me
privately and I'll get you more info.

Regards
Cathy Fetherston CM MSc IBCLC
Perth Western Australia

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