Jan Riordan presented a session this past summer at the LLLI 
conference about how to assess breastfeeding in the first few days. 
I have loaned out my syllabus so don't have it to refer to -- anyone 
else at that session?  I think the session title was Measuring 
Breastfeeding.

What I recall is that she investigated all the things that we *think* 
indicate good breastfeeding, and correlated them with actual 
successful breastfeeding (measured by amt of milk transfer a few days 
later??  I can't remember that part.).  It turned out that only 
audible swallowing and active rooting were reliable indicators, and 
after the first or second day, rooting ceased to be predictive.  Only 
audible swallowing remained as a useful assessment for breastfeeding.

This certainly lines up with Dawn's comment:


>I always think that the two things that matter most in this scoring 
>system are the audible swallowing and the condition of the nipples, 
>since they tell you pretty much how everything else is going. I'll 
>be interested to see what you come up with!
>
>
>Dawn M. Kersula MA, RN, IBCLC

Margaret
LLLL
Longmont, CO

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