A Three Course Meal and a
Dance
by Diane
Wiessinger
The whole
time you are lactating, you'll be making milk twenty-four hours a day. It
collects in the tiny ducts throughout your breast and makes you feel more
and more full as time passes between nursings. You produce milk fastest
when your breast is emptiest, most slowly when your breast feels full.
That's why it doesn't make sense to "wait for your breast to fill" before
nursing again. The ducts in our breasts make pretty small storage tanks,
but they connect to many powerful factories. Nursing more often puts
those factories into high gear and produces more milk. Nursing less
often sends a strong signal to cut back on overall production.
Your
between-nursings "seeped" milk is a rather lowfat milk. When your baby
nurses, she first drinks this "soup course". But the action of her nursing
begins to draw down a higher and higher fat milk. Most of what she gets
from that breast is a medium-fat "main course," but near the end, when she
isn't swallowing very often, she gets the highest fat milk of all - like the
small, high-fat dessert after your own meal. If she nurses again soon
after, the fat tends to be mixed all through the milk. As the time between
nursings gets longer, the difference between low fat and high fat milk
becomes greater and greater.
If you
follow the old, rigid advice to wait a certain length of time and then nurse
on both sides, taking her off Side One in order to give her Side Two, you'll
be giving your baby two "soup courses" and may leave her too full for
"dessert". She'll be full - but not necessarily happy. All that lower fat
milk without enough high-fat milk can upset her intestines, making her gassy
and colicky. And all that pent-up milk can feel to your baby like nursing
on a firehose. Is your baby fussy and irritable, squirming and pulling
off the breast? Before you blame your milk supply or diet, ask yourself if
you've been making a point of nursing on both sides each time, or of spacing
out nursings.
It makes
more sense to do what every other mammal does: nurse whenever the baby
likes, and let a happily nursing baby stay where she is. If she wants the
other side too, fine. If she doesn't, it will keep. Nursing isn't meant to
be formal or complicated; you can nurse your baby as casually and willingly
as you kiss her.
Like any
other loving relationship, nursing works best when it has the fewest rules
attached to it. Most mothers find that they really begin to enjoy nursing
when they stop thinking about it - when they no longer know or care
how often the baby nurses, or when the last nursing was, or how long it
lasted. Nursing is like dancing. Once you both learn the basic steps, you
become partners in your own special style, and the rules lose their
importance. If your baby likes to nurse on one side each time or if she
wants both sides, if she prefers several quick snacks each hour, if you want
to keep her quiet while youre on the phone, if one arm gets tired and you
want to switch, if she wants to nurse again right away, if you need
for her to nurse, or if... well, you get the picture. If it's working for
you and your baby, it's right. Invent your own steps and enjoy your "dinner
dance"!
©2000 Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC 136 Ellis
Hollow Creek Road Ithaca, NY 14850
www.wiessinger.baka.com |
