What do you make of this......?

[sammysam]

I have seen thisarticle on the NHS website and just wandered what people thought. I fed dd on demand til she was 2.8 and for most of that time she fed for over an hour. This time round that won't be an option with dd to entertain/get to pre-school etc.
I know dc2 could be very different anyway and feed for less but just wandered what other people thought/did?

That's interesting, though it is a pretty small group.

FWIW, DD has always been a pretty efficient feeder (fed on demand but only for ten minutes or so usually) and I've only recently started offering both breasts when I'm trying to put her to bed and don't want one really full boob all evening (!), but she's always put on weight well and has stuck to the 75th centile

sammysam - it's a poor study, as the commentary makes clear.

All those caveats at the bottom - the study was hardly worth doing and even less worth reporting.

I've always fed DS on demand, and apart from early growth spurts he has rarely fed for more than 10 minutes. He is now 12 months and I'm still feeding him morning, night and during the night. I do now offer both breasts at each feed so a feed takes 10-15 minutes.
Apart from initial weight loss due to it taking us about 3 weeks to get his latch sorted, he has always gained weight very well.

DS (19 weeks) only feeds from one side at a time, I started off trying to swap sides at each feed and he was having none of it! He eats when he wants, for as long as he wants and I let him get on with it. He only lost 100g in the first week or so, and is now just over 18lbs and on the 91st centile.

From my (very limited) experience, babies seem to know when they want to feed, and how much, and I'm not going to interfere with that.

What's interesting is the assumption that more weight gain automatically = better, but I can't see that that can be true for all babies - you're looking for appropriate weight gain, not maximum, surely?

Study didn't look that impressive - annoying again that the media pick it up as a "fact".