Scheduling is the Beginning of the End of Breastfeeding

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a pretty scheduled person. My husband would probably say I am overscheduled. I like predictability and routine. I find my life runs more smoothly when I have some sort of a plan. And then we had kids, and my life became all about Plan B, or rather someone else's schedule. 

I think that might be the hardest thing about motherhood: adjusting to and rearranging your life around someone else's needs. But for a breastfeeding mother, it is an absolute necessity, especially if you want to breastfeed successfully. Yet this is an area where I see the most devoted mothers sabotage themselves. They are well educated and read everything, and usually focus on a book that adheres to a strict schedule that they hope will restore some order to the chaos a newborn brings to their life. There are many of these books out there, written by people who are very well regarded. And their plans might work, but not for a breastfed baby, and not at every stage of their development. 

Breastfeeding is all about supply and demand. The more frequently a baby nurses, the more milk is made. A newborn's little tummy is only the size of a small marble at birth and can hold only 5-7cc, or less than a third of an ounce of milk. At this time a mom is producing small amounts of highly concentrated nutritious colostrum. On the third day of life, when mom's milk comes in, it can hold between 22-27ml, just less than an ounce; not a 3 ounce bottle of formula. By 10 days, a baby's stomach is the size of a ping pong ball and can hold 60-81 ml. Obviously, as the baby grows, that capacity increases even more.

So, there is a biological reason why a mom's milk supply increases slowly over the first weeks of life. Breast milk is also very easy to digest. If you combine that with the baby's small stomach capacity, you have a baby that needs to eat rather frequently in the beginning. When the baby does that, and drains the milk effectively, the body replaces it and milk is available when the baby needs to eat next.

What happens if a breastfeeding mother follows a schedule recommended in one of these popular books? For example, she nurses only every 3 hours, not a minute sooner and only for 10 minutes each side, in an attempt to teach the baby to eat on schedule. Not only will she have a very unhappy baby, her milk supply will rapidly dry up, as her breasts are not being stimulated frequently. She and her baby will not sleep well and she will turn to larger amounts of formula to tide her baby over for a longer time between feedings (as it's harder to digest) so everyone can rest.

Please remember that the advice given to new moms is to nurse AT LEAST every 3 hours, waking a newborn if necessary to get AT LEAST eight feedings in the 24 hours. Most thriving healthy babies will wake more frequently to eat and may pack 4 feedings in 5 hours upon waking from a long stretch of sleep or prior to crashing for a few hours. This is normal. It is a phase and it passes rather quickly. I wish all moms knew this so they don't view those first weeks as a life time sentence, but rather the chance to rest, nourish and get to know their baby. It is necessary to get breastfeeding off to a good start. It gets easier every week. The time between feedings stretches out and the baby gets a larger amount at each meal. You will sleep again and for more than a few hours at a time!

Eventually, babies settle into a routine and a very nice one at that! But it is the baby's routine, and moms will easily adjust to it once they see how happy and healthy their baby is. It will allow them to have a little predictability to their day and to plan accordingly. And when the baby's schedule doesn't go their way, they will have a Plan B and work around it!

So while new babies do disrupt your schedule initially, we hope you can see why it is healthy and normal for them to eat on demand. In the end, your baby will feel better, be healthier and that, as we all know, makes for a happier mom!