Is the fore milk / hind milk think complete bollocks?

[Wildpoppy]

I mean, if the baby only drinks the fore milk at a feed and leaves the hind milk then next time she goes to that breast does the leftover hind milk miraculously become fore milk? It's all bollocks, surely?

No, the composition of breastmilk changes as the baby feeds. In the first stage the thinner milk changes into the fattier milk the longer a baby feeds.

Thinking of it as foremilk/hindmilk is definitely misleading.

Maybe it's better to think of it as a milk from an empty breast being fattier than milk from a full breast. So a baby that feeds briefly but frequently from emptier breasts will be getting lots of fatty milk iyswim.

Will explain tomorrow - or will link to another thread.

Watch this space :)

(milk left in the breast doesn't hang about - it actually goes back up the ducts)

the way it describes it makes it sound like theres are 2 milks. Basically (correct me if i'm wrong) its all the one milk. When your baby latches on they start drinking the milk and at first the milk comes out thinner but as they continue sucking the milk gets thicker and as its thicker its a little harder to suck.

The milk isn't necessarily thinner at the beginning of each feed though - if the baby fed recently and the breast is quite soft, the milk will be fattier.

The fore/hindmilk thing leads to people thinking you have to make the baby feed for a certain length or time to get the good milk, or that you have to put the baby back on the same side or feed from only one side at each feed, when in general it's fine to let the baby dictate how long it feeds for.

Good explanation from the Analytical Armadillo blog

www.kellymom.com/bf/supply/foremilk-hindmilk.html as ever the useful Kelly Mom website explains it well :)

'Left over' hindmilk - fattier milk that's come down the ducts as the breast empties - does not remain long in the nipple end of the breast.

Some of it goes back up the ducts (I wish I could find a link for this - it's something to do with osmotic pressure) and some of it becomes diluted because of foremilk trickling down the ducts as the gap between that previous feed and the next one lengthens.

A baby feeding very frequently will tend to get higher fat milk - emptier breasts = higher fat.

But in 99 per cent of cases it doesn't matter. Babies sort it out, the mother's body sorts it out, and nothing needs to be done, timed, looked at or thought about :)