>Something does puzzle me - why do you see so many 'oversupply' 'problems'
>in Australia?

Good question Mary! It's better than it used to be when we did have
standard hospital teaching of '10 minutes a side' and the clock was
all-important! (It was like this when my first was born, and we ended up
with oversupply.) Perhaps we see less low supply than in some other
countries because of the encouragement of frequent early feeding in
hospital, and demand feeding (or 'feeding according to need' as we prefer
to call it in Nursing Mothers') is so well accepted. If a baby is unsettled
at all for any reason, most people would advocate giving him a feed, so
occasionally they get into that vicious cycle of colic and frequent feeding
- ie, baby cries with pain from tummy ache, but *acts* like he's hungry,
mum feeds, and baby gets more tummy ache, and so on. Most mothers in this
situation who phone Nursing Mothers' for help perceive they have low supply
because the baby wants to feed all the time and never seems satisfied. When
you discover baby is doing over ten wet nappies and day and heaps of dirty
ones, it's a dead give-away it's oversupply.

Joy Anderson IBCLC, NMAA Breastfeeding Counsellor,
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]