BF interval stretch longer = milk ss drop?

hi sarah
thanks for the reassurances. it's great to hear i'm doing ok..been fretting about lots of things. Can i jus reconfirm certain things? Do u really mean, that by 2-3month, mothers breastfeeding SHUD NOT feel engorged to have their breasts full of milk anymore? Me and my frens are always thinking that breasts got milk = engorged or at least hardened breasts feeling. Are u saying, we can actually have our soft feeling breasts back but it's full of milk? And the leaking will actually stop?

Sorry, got another question in mind. Take my baby as an example. She has been feeding 3hourly. If all of a sudden, during one feed or two, she slept longer hours, at an interval of 4hours, i SHUD NOT pump my milk out and jus wait for her to wake up and latch her on? All along i always tot that if she misses the usual 3hour gap, i shud either wake her up or pump my milk out (empty my breast) to MAINTAIN my supply. Cos all along i have been told if i dont do that, my supply will drop. So wat happens when baby moves to a 4hourly interval?? In another words, i shud jus feed on demand? This is where i say i think i'm doing a bad job, becos i dunno how to read my baby! I do notice that as she grows older, she doesnt root that much anymore...so i'm at a loss as to when she REALLY is hungry and wan to feed. :(
 
Dear Fennho,

Please don't worry about not knowing all about breastfeeding. I see this as one of the big failings in our society. We teach lots of academic subjects these days but very few that are actually of practical value for living life.

I would like to see all mothers breastfeed in public so that the teenage girls get to see what breastfeeding is like. Then the next generation of mothers might not find it as hard as this generation does.

fennho said:
Can i jus reconfirm certain things? Do u really mean, that by 2-3month, mothers breastfeeding SHUD NOT feel engorged to have their breasts full of milk anymore? Me and my frens are always thinking that breasts got milk = engorged or at least hardened breasts feeling. Are u saying, we can actually have our soft feeling breasts back but it's full of milk? And the leaking will actually stop? :(
Click to expand...

YES, YES, YES and YES

A normal lactating breast is soft and doesn't leak. One of the problems with breastfeeding in Hong Kong is that most mothers don't carry on breastfeeding for very long. So most mothers never get to the normal stage of lactating - only the early stages. But if you carry on breastfeeding for over four months your breasts can be soft all day long.


fennho said:
If all of a sudden, during one feed or two, she slept longer hours, at an interval of 4hours, i SHUD NOT pump my milk out and jus wait for her to wake up and latch her on? :(
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I would not wake her or pump. Neither of these things is necessary.

If your baby were only two weeks old and was not managing to feed eight times a day - then that would be different. But your baby is now two months and we are expecting her to slowly increase the time between feeds - and your body is expecting it too.

fennho said:
All along i always tot that if she misses the usual 3hour gap, i shud either wake her up or pump my milk out (empty my breast) to MAINTAIN my supply. :(
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Not necessary - your body knows what to do now - so relax and just enjoy life.

fennho said:
Cos all along i have been told if i dont do that, my supply will drop. So wat happens when baby moves to a 4hourly interval?? In another words, i shud jus feed on demand? :(
Click to expand...

YES

fennho said:
This is where i say i think i'm doing a bad job, becos i dunno how to read my baby! I do notice that as she grows older, she doesnt root that much anymore...so i'm at a loss as to when she REALLY is hungry and wan to feed. :(
Click to expand...

Don't worry about the baby rooting any more just be with her and offer her to feed when she seems a little unhappy with life. Don't worry too much exactly what the problem is - breastfeeding usually solves it.

As she grows you can try doing other things, like playing with her, or walking about but if she continues to be upset then feed her.

Try and forget all the rules that people have told you about breastfeeding - there aren't any. You just do it in a way that suits you both.

For some mother and baby pairs this will be quite regularly and for others it is much more flexible. It really doesn’t matter whether she feeds every three hours, every fours hours or even every hour – so long as you both are happy.

A normal baby tends to have three different feeding patterns. One might be regular, say she starts the feeds at 7:00 am, 9:30 am and then 12:00 noon – and there are exactly 2.5 hours between the feeds. The second pattern the baby sleeps a little longer, maybe 4, 5 or even 6 hours – and, of course, you hope this is at night but it isn’t always. And the third pattern is one of making up for the feeds that she missed while asleep. So she may have 4, 5 or 6 feeds in just 3 or 4 hours. Usually the baby will top up with these feeds before she goes down for the longer sleep. This is called cluster feeding but I refer to it as a Chinese banquet (It is in the thread entitled Not enough milk - Top up bottles, http://www.geobaby.com/forum/not-eno...t119515p2.html)

When my babies were little I never worried about what they wanted if they would breastfeed. I only started trying other things when they didn’t want to feed anymore.

Best wishes,
SARAH
 
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1st of all, i agree with Sarah. you're a great mom & you're doing a great job giving your child the best nutrition for her physically (brain & limbs & all!) & emotionally by holding him close to you, feeling the warmth of his mom & hearing his mom's heartbeat with every meal. look, he's in 95th-tile weight from the food that only you can provide.

then, there will come a time when your breasts are soft & your baby is still getting milk from them. they do make milk as he suckles. your breasts don't exactly work like a cartons. you don't have to fill up a carton to provide your bb enough. he can be sucking & you can be making at the same time. since you always have soft breasts then you shuldn't have to worry about engorging.

none of us know when our bb is hungry & when he's full when we're 1st time moms. (hell, i wouldn't know if i have a second one. all babies express themselves differently!) people with experience might know, but even loads of moms & pui yuet nowadays don't know. cos most of the babies in the past 50years were bottle fed. and with bttle feeding, you just didn't care about any other thing & just feed them according to a time-table & a chart that the formula companies provide. babies are humans & the provider of the milk is human. it's natural not to have any instruction manuals that come with being a new mom breastfeeding (unlike the prints on the formula cans!!). so it is natural for you to feel inadequate. i'm sure a lot of us here did. i definitely did. i just kept talking to my lactation consultant & my LLL leader, and they kept reassuring me that i was doing a good job. my daughter was also in the 95%-tile in weight when she was 6-12 mths. (when she was born, she was 50%-tile in weight & 45%tile in height) she was so fat, i used to call her my little piggy. they reassured me that breastfed babies are fine even if they seem fat. turns out she didn't gain as much weight in the next 2 years. she gradually fell from 98%tile at 12 mths. 95%tile at 18mths. 90%tile at 2yrs. she just turned 3 yrs old last mth, she's now at 70%tile in weight, her ped said she's fine. the thing is, remember she was 45%tile in height? both my husband & i are between 45%-50%in height for chinese adults. my daughter is 3, and she's in 75%tile in height. i credit that height to all the breastmilk i gave her until she was 16mths. (of course, she also exercise a lot, running, jumping, etc)

with what you're decribing sounds like cluster-feeding, as Sarah said. my daughter was also like that when she was trying to sleep thru the night. she'd be feeding exactly at you'd describe around sunset & she's sleep for 6-9hrs stretch.

anyway, i just wanted to give you reassurance that you're doing a good job.
 
hi sarah and joanne

thanks (for the umptenth time!) again for answering my (dumb) questions endlessly.

So for working mothers, who cannot latch direct all the time, i reckon they have to pump at a certain schedule, rite? I have a fren who told me for her #1, she had undersupply becos she just latch and didnt pump, so her boy had sleeping problems. So for the #2 this time round (she gave birth about the same time as me), she doesnt care about oversupply anymore, jus latch AND pump for fear of low supply again. This was her exact mail:

"during #1 bf days, i din hv engorgement during my Maternity Leave, and for the remaining months that i bf while i'm working. But hor, he had problms sleeping coz i was low in supply (dat's why no engorgement ma). 3.5kg at birth, i insisted on TBF. So he was hungry all the time even tho he was latched on all the time. For months I woke up 3-4 times at night to latch him on, in the end it became a lousy sleep association - everytime he came into light sleep he couldn't fall back to sleep on his own so had to latch him on. Tried water, patting etc.. no use. So many times nearly dropped him coz i was so so tired.. daytime work, night time latch.
This time, with another large bb (4.5kg at birth), I told myself he gotto eat enuf to sleep enuf. And thus the oversupply. Baby drinks a lot when latched on, but only 40ml from bottle. But what to do, i gotto go back to work soon & he has to get used to the bottle right? So i pump every time he's taking bottle.. he takes 40ml vs my boobs supply 200ml. Yes, it's very troublesome to be engorged and need to pump for comfort.. i was thinking back to those days 2yrs back "how come that time my boobs not so problematic??" Maybe after i start work, they will adjust to the 3 hourly pump & be more obedient. In the meantime, i just gotto find somewhere to store all the excess febm. Yeah, i know abt the quality of bm changing thru the day & months, but maybe i'll mix the old febm with FM when baby is older, or give to my older boy"

for her #1 case, how come she latched on all the time, yet still have low supply? BF is really puzzling!

Btw, one more important question hanging on my mind...with the flu outbreak recently, everyone's encouraged to get the anti-flu jab....is it safe or even advisable for BF mommies to get one too? I am very mindful of whatever food/injections or even anything that i do to my body for fear of affecting my BM to my baby. 101 questions on my mind, can i dye my hair (it's turning grey!), can i apply strong acne cream on my acne, or can i apply tea tree oil? Can i apply anti dandruff lotion on my scalp? Can i drink cold drinks? Sigh.
 
oh...one more thing I'm unsure of..u were saying a normal lactating breast by 4th month shud feel soft all day long...how soft? Or abit of hardened full feeling? Or total soft like pre-pregnancy soft? Then how do we gauge if we got anymore milk or if the milk ss has depleted? Then if in any event we need to be away and hv to pump..would a soft breast be able to react to a pump by then...I noticed I only get alot of milk if I pump when I'm engorged! Wat if I pump and amount expressed is insufficient to feed bb? I'm asking this becos although I am a full time SAHM, we never know when we need to be away from her..maybe dats y mommies like my fren still pump knowing its causing oversupply becos its better to hv more than less.
 
Dear Fennho,

Babies waking up often at night is not related to having a low supply of milk. The e-mail from your friend didn?t actually give any information to be able to tell if her baby was getting enough milk or not. She didn?t mention the weight gain or the baby?s output.

The only way to tell that a baby is getting enough milk is to look at the baby ? not the baby?s habits.
  • Is the baby growing?
  • Is the baby having six wet nappies every 24 hours?
  • If under six weeks, is the baby having at least two dirty nappies in 24 hours?
  • Is the baby feeding between 8 and 14 times a day?
These are the only way to tell if your baby is getting enough milk.

Things like:
  • Your baby breastfeeds very often.
  • Your baby suddenly increases the frequency and/or length of his breastfeedings.
  • Your baby seems hungry soon after being fed
  • Your baby?s nursing habits, weight gain or sleep patterns don?t compare with other babies you know
  • Your baby suddenly decreases his nursing time, perhaps down to five to ten minutes per breast.
  • Your baby is fussy
  • Baby wakes up at night
  • Your breasts leak only a little or not at all
  • Your breasts suddenly seem softer.
  • You never feel the milk let-down or it does not seem as strong as it was before.
  • You cannot express much milk
  • Your baby will take a bottle after nursing
  • You weigh your baby before and after a feeding and it appears he didn?t gain much.
are just false alarms and do NOT mean you have a low supply.

If you can read Chinese we have a pamphlet on our web site which will explain these points in more detail at http://www.lllhk.org/1443-17HK-Chinese.pdf

If you don?t and would like the English version please e-mail at sihung7@netvigator,com and I?ll send you the pamphlet, Increase Your Milk, as an attachment.

Best wishes,
SARAH
 
Is it safe or even advisable for BF mommies to get one too?
Thomas Hale PhD in Medications and Mothers’ Milk give the Influenza Virus Vaccine a lactation risk of L1. This is the safest category.

Can I dye my hair?
Yes

Can I apply strong acne cream on my acne?
Do these creams include steroids? If you can give me the names of the medicines I can look them up in the book, Medications and Mothers’ Milk by Thomas Hale PhD. (This is the book on the subject of what medicines are safe to take while breastfeeding.)

Can I apply tea tree oil?
Thomas Hale PhD in Medications and Mothers’ Milk gives tea tree oil a lactation risk of L3. This is the category given when not enough information is known. He says, “Use directly on the nipple should be minimized.”

Can I apply anti dandruff lotion on my scalp?
YES

Can I drink cold drinks?
YES
 
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thanks sarah!!

the flu vaccine - so is it advisable to get the jab now?? altho it's L1, it's still a risk rite? are the flu vaccines in ALL HK clinics standardize since what i know is, there are 1001 types of flu.

tea tree oil - errr...i dont mean applying it directly on my nipple, more on the acne on my face.
 
Taking any drug is always a risk (to anyone – not just if you are breastfeeding). You always have to weigh the risk of not taking the drug against the risk of taking it. Having said that the risk with an L1 drug is really very, very small.

L1 – SAFEST
Drug which has been taken by a large number of breastfeeding mothers without any observed effects in the infant. Controlled studies in breastfeeding women fail to demonstrate a risk to the infant and the possibility of harm to the breastfeeding infant is remote, or the product is not orally bio-available in an infant.
Medications and Mothers’ Milk by Thomas Hale PhD

Using tea tree oil on your face should be no problem. I think the reason that has been written is because tea tree oil is a possible medication for thrush. But if you have thrush on the nipples there are better drugs/medications to take.

SARAH
 
hi sarah...long time didn't hear from u. I hv since ceased all pumping in the middle of the night. Wake up with breasts rock hard and wet night dress, breast pad soaked thru and wet bedsheet as well! Now I'm worried if my supply is diminishing becos during the day my bb is taking longer than usual to finish a feed! Last time she used to take only 15-30mins to suckle...now she can latch for 1hour plus! Im worried its due to my supply going down thus milk flow super slow and breast not making milk fast enough..this is so confusing...
 
Dear Fennho,

You aren’t going to like this answer but it really doesn’t matter. If your milk flow has slowed a little – that’s fine – it doesn’t mean the baby is taking less milk. The only problem is if you are very uncomfortable with the hard breasts – if no, then leave it – if yes, express a little out until you are comfortable again.

The only way to tell if your baby is getting enough milk is:

[1] Is the baby growing?
[2] Is the baby having six wet nappies every 24 hours?
[3] If under six weeks, is the baby having at least two dirty nappies in 24 hours?
[4] Is the baby feeding between 8 and 12 times a day (under three months)? Or about 8 feeds if baby is over three months?

The answers to these questions should be “yes”.

If the answer to question 1 or question 2 is “no” call me on 2548-7636 – as I don’t want to deal with failure to thrive questions on an open forum.

Best wishes,
SARAH
 
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