I agree wholeheartedly with the suggestions to let the baby determine the length of the feeding - watch the baby not the clock! I would like to add a caveat. It takes a new baby time to learn how to nurse, up to six weeks, sometimes longer. A new mother may see that her baby *falls* off the breast after a few minutes and interprets this to mean that he has finished that side. She will then switch breasts, and when the same thing happens again, assume that he has drunk all her milk. Of course, when the baby cries, she worries that all her milk is gone, and so she is tempted to supplement with abm. You see the problem? We need to teach the mother of a newborn to continue putting the baby back to the same breast until he refuses it to make sure he gets a good feed with plenty of hindmilk before switching to the other side. I really hesitate to give numbers with regard to feeding times...I think it is more useful to count wet and dirty diapers than minutes at the breast. Another thing I have noticed is that a lot of new mothers do not know how milk is made. They do not realize that there is always milk available. I like to use the analogy of saliva....even if your mouth feels dry, just smelling something delicious will make it water. In the same way, breasts are stimulated to produce more milk by nursing (removing more milk to encourage a greater milk production.) Oh...one more thing... Breastfeeding is a lot more than FEEDING. It is a whole way of nurturing a baby. Babies nurse for many reasons, and they are all valid! It is practically impossible to overfeed a breastfed baby. You will know when he is finished because he will stop nursing. It is as simple as that. Norma Ritter, IBCLC private practice in Big Flats, NY [log in to unmask] ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. *********************************************** 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