When Breastfeeding Feels Never Ending

MIL MEME

Again, already?!

Ummm yeah.

Newborn tummies are tiny and breastmilk is very easily digestible. Feeding schedules are made in response to infant formula, not boob. As much as some professionals still recommend watching the clock, this has been debunked for years.

Watch your baby, call for back up so others can do every other task on your to-do list, and get cosy on the couch for some serious cluster feeding.

Cluster feeding is frequent/non-stop feeding, which is most common in the evenings at growth spurt times - for a week or so at around 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months of age. These are the key points mums stop breastfeeding as they think/are told they're not making enough milk, or that's their milk isn't good enough. This is actually when baby is building your milk supply up another notch.

A few days ago the amazing Lucy Ruddle IBCLC shared a graphic on exactly this that got shared over 520 times! Here's her explanation:

"It can be hard to explain this simply, but basically there is an ingredient in breastmilk called FIL. As the breast fills up, FIL gets bossy AF and tells the milk production to slow down. So the fuller your boob, the SLOWER milk is being made. ALSO, fat kind of clings to your milk ducts, so when your breast feels as flat as a pancake after 2 hours of cluster feeding and your baby is pulling on and off like they haven't eaten for weeks they are actually pulling out that really high fat milk. So they don't need high volumes of it. THEN because the breast is really soft and FIL isn't really hanging around at this point, the breast speeds up production so you have lots more milk later.

Clever isn't it?"

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