Short breastfeeds best for baby - what do people think of this study?

[hairtwiddler]

I read this with interest the other day - sorry if it's been discussed already.
I had a hard time feeding dd1 - she would feed for over an hour at a time and I was absolutely exhausted by it. At one point I was feeding for about 17hours out of 24! I expect she was sucking for comfort a lot of the time, but I'm not sure how I would do things differently were I to feed another baby.

So, open to discussion:
Feeding on demand or routine like in the article?
Would routine feeding make more mums breastfeed for longer?
How do you settle a baby between feeds if you know they will settle on the breast?

No firm plans to TTC no.2 yet, but am storing up useful information in case I do!

ah - i've been looking for this thread. very interested

a link to the study would have been helpful!

Very poor study, been criticised a lot - hairtwiddler, you prob needed help in ensuring your baby was transferring milk properly.

is there a link to the original article (rather than bbc reporting it iyswim)?

My boy never feeds for more than 10 minutes total at a time. He was 2 hrly ish when he was little and now (10m old) he feeds 2 hrly at night and every 3-4 hrs in the day.

Interesting that they seem to look only at volume and not foremilk, hindmilk etc. What about women who let-down more than once? And funnily enough the charts we use here for growth were done about a million years ago on babies who the majority of were getting formula (in NZ)

And its done by people who look primarily at diseases not breastfeeding

Funny.

Can you explain in more detail tiktok? Haven't had time to look at the study itself, but did think about the foremilk/hinkmilk thing. This was one of the reasons I never took DD off the breast, I was worried she wouldn't get the hindmilk. Will check out the other thread.

hairtwiddler - with hindsight, I know my baby fed too much - she was forever being grossly sick from overfeeding. But because of the advice to "feed on demand" I didn't dare take her off.

If I ever manage to have another baby I am forewarned.

Message withdrawn

There's a thread already on here, lower down, which has some of the weaknesses of the study listed.

The key to happy breastfeeding is being responsive to the baby's behaviour and needs - this does not mean being scared to take the baby off in case he doesn't 'get' the hindmilk. Hindmilk is not obtained like that (by keeping the baby on for ages) - there is so much misunderstanding even in books

There is no 'the' himdmilk and 'the' foremilk - see kellymom.com for a good explanation of what happens. The fat content of milk varies, but it varies with the amount of milk in the breast - full breast = proportionately less fat; 'empty' in " " because the breast is never empty) = proportionately more fat.

We have somehow got the wrong idea that the baby has to be sucking for a certain amount of time in order to sort of 'drill through' to 'the hindmilk' - not true. Yes, if the breast is very full, and the gaps between feeds long, the fat content of the milk will increase as milk is removed, but a baby feeding with small gaps only between his feeds will get fattier milk from the first mouthful.

You don't need to engineer it all in any way - following the baby's cues works it all out

This study has so many flaws, and the e-responses to it detail some of them. Just read the responses at the journal's website.

Starlight, I don't understand why you are 'calling' me....that thread's about a birth. Am I missing something?

Ah, I missed it! That's shocking. For a start, the midwife is wrong, and also, making personal remarks about a labouring woman's anatomy is just not nice. It happened to me - just after birth. The midwife looked at me and said 'hmm, your nipples are a bit flat, aren't they.....?'

I think it's rude, to be honest!

[[ellie update- she's on a drip to speed up but they expect her to deliver in next few hours

she sends soph her congrats- and hopes dondons delivering too this}} is it tiktok

here tiktok

Thanks for really helpful response tiktok. I'm still not sure what you mean by 'transferring milk properly' May be I was being rubbish at reading cues - i.e. every cry I put her on the breast!

What should new mums to do when baby feeds for such a long time? Mine never seemed to get more efficient!

Will read those comments tonight thanks. Some demons to deal with before I think about TTC again. This is all helping.

transferring milk properly = getting milk from the breast into the baby ie the baby is not just looking as if he is feeding.

Sometimes, babies are not actually feeding - there's no swallowing, or not much.

This 'hanging out' at the breast is fine, of course, and lots of babies do it 'cos they enjoy it. But they have to have done some actual feeding, too!!

Yes, I suspect that is exactly what she was doing - for most of the day and the night! I suppose my main concern about having another baby is that I would struggle to have baby on the breast for such a long time with a toddler to entertain. I never got the hang of slings (being extrememly large of breast and very small of shoulder!) and needed to sit on the sofa with a small towel propping up my boob while DD fed.
I realise this is not a problem I'm going to encounter for a while! Saw the BBC article and was hopeful that I might be able to do it that way next time around - although if I had routine fed with DD I would have spent most of the day listening to screaming!
I'm pretty glad that mumsnet will no doubt be here if I ever have to cross that bridge.

I just looked at the article and thought - amazing how the vast majority of women from about 150 years ago back to the dawn of time have managed to successfully breastfeed their babies without having access to a time-piece!

Ha! Very good point!