Evening cluster feeding - will I ever have enough milk?

[ChrissyJ]

Hi for the past week or so, my 10wk old has been cluster feeding in the late afternoon/ early evenings (and consequently sleeping longer at night, yay!).

I try to breast feed him at this time but several evenings he has not been satisfied when I have given him all I can from the boob, so I have reluctantly ff him.

I know that he has to demand more to make me produce more but how can I get this to happen without him going hungry and screaming the place down (not to mention the sore nips from feeding so often!)

He's just had a bf followed by 200ml of formula and he's still looking for more...

Glad he went off to sleep ok Chrissy.
The thing is like hunker said there is no such thing as an empty breast your milk is continually being produced so even if he has had enough there will still be more coming.
Foxy they have realised that this foremilk hindmilk thing is not actually accurate and that you do not need to keep a baby on the breast for a long period to receive the "hindmilk" the waht you know as foremilk is the first milk that comes out as the fatty deposits of in what you call the hindmilk are stuck and come through so the milk does not change as such throughout the feed as before thought it changes when the milk starts flowing and the thick fatty bits start flowing.

If you're cluster-feeding, then the chances are that by moving from one breast to the next in relatively quick succession, your baby is only getting hind-milk after the first few mins or so on each breast. This is for the reasons that Adath has explained -because the breasts don't have time to fill up again properly between cluster-feeds, the fatty deposits don't get stuck in the breast and are still washing around in the milk when baby next comes to that breast.

FWIW, DS cluster fed until he was 4 months old. It didn't stop overnight, but was more of a gradual reduction in the time he spent feeding.

well, there you go! Its only been 2 years since I last breastfeed, and I've never heard of these changes in thinking, so that's interesting.

I don't disagree that breasts never entirely empty, but there must surely come a point when its running on empty? You couldn't keep a baby on the same one continually could you? (I mean apart from the fact it would hurt, could you theoretically sustain an infant on one breast?)

I'll definately be looking into this school of thought more as I'm due to have number 4 in June, so its really interesting to me. Thanks.

Speaking purely from my own experience, mine don't empty in terms of there is still physically milk there but they DO empty in terms of it becomes too frustrating for DS to feed (from his point of view) or he has to suck so hard that it's painful for me.

Actually you could in practice sustain a baby on one breast.
I know one person with twins who each twin had a breast each so each one surviving on one breast never having been offered the other.

Well I have been bf ds for a year now and have only been told of these changes in that time. Don't stand still too long in the world of babies eh? changes everyday.

Good luck with number 4 we are just talking about working on number 3 not convinced dp will agree to go onto 4 but then he said never ever to 3

I would just like to say thanks for all the replies, I persevered and it all got a lot better. He hasn't had formula for two weeks now AND he slept right through from 7pm-5.30am twice this week!! You helped me stick with it, thanks MNers!