Cathy writes;
>>And just to really throw the cat amongst the pigeons - energy intake (in
breastmilk) has not been shown to be correlated to infant growth.
"growth is not related to either concentration or amount of fat, protein or
energy":  Mitoulas et al (in press) British Journal of Nutrition. Leon
(Mitoulas) found that infant growth was only correlated to volume intake.
This in fact supports much earlier research (Butte et al. 1984) "the amount
of milk, and not the concentration of its constituents exerted the greatest
impact on growth".<<

then Heather writes;
>>Yes, yes.....and the baby does this, doesn't she, in partnership with
the mother, by removing hindmilk more efficiently, so the calorie
density of the milk goes up, on the whole, as the baby grows. There
are some refs in Riordan and Auerbach of studies which show how the
*volume* of milk taken does not actually increase after (from memory)
three months or so.<<
So how DO we reconcile these two statements?
It sounds as if it could have a lot to do with the body's increased
efficiency, in terms of energy use, over time ?
Sheesh,  I didn't know, how much  I didn't know!

Lynn Shea Rn,Bsn,Ibclc
Franklin,Massachusetts

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