Breastfeeding Addendum : Blog
Laurence H. Miller, MD
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Breastfeeding Addendum

by Doctor Laurence H. Miller on 10/05/15

I recently heard a lecture on breastfeeding that gave me an "AHA!" moment.

The consistency of breast milk CHANGES during a feeding.  It is thinner and sweet at the beginning of a feeding, and becomes thicker and creamy "at the end of the meal".  
What is the importance of this?  It means that babies "know" when a feeding is "winding down" and coming to an end.  Even in the first weeks of life, they become aware of the change, anticipate it and accept it.  The creamy milk at the end is MORE FILLING.  So the baby is more likely physically and emotionally satisfied by the end.  (Everyone enjoys dessert when dining!)
And this is experienced by the baby at EVERY FEEDING.  A baby who experiences this all through infancy will have a different "approach" to feeding than a baby who has a homogenized liquid (like formula) at every meal, where there's no difference from first suck to last.
Remember that this has been the feeding technique of ALL BABIES for ALL of HUMAN HISTORY, until the LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
So you can be sure that this pattern HAS MOLDED US AS A SPECIES, IN OUR RELATION TO FOOD AND EATING.  This is all likely part of the cause for the EPIDEMIC OF OBESITY IN YOUNG PEOPLE we have seen in the last 50 years.  Every suck a baby takes from a bottle gives him/her a mouthful of milk. But it wasn't meant to work that way:   SOMETIMES, A BABY'S DESIRE TO SUCK IS NOT FOR FOOD BUT FOR COMFORT. (It is a pleasurable activity IN ITSELF.) So it is very common that "bottle babies" overfeed.   The sucking instinct is like the breathing instinct in a way: it is never satisfied for long, or we would die.  
Unfortunately, when breast milk is pumped and served in a bottle, this benefit of consistency change over the course of a meal IS LOST, as the baby gets THE SAME MILK FROM FIRST SUCK TO LAST.  But pumped breast milk is still preferred to formula since the nutritional and immune benefit is superior.


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