Breast 'capacity' question!

[VickyB20]

Hi!

I am breastfeeding my twin boys who will be six months old this week.  They were exclusively breastfed until we started solids three weeks ago. 

Up until a month or so ago, they were feeding every four hours with one feed (plus dreamfeed) in the night.  We were having some issues with early waking in the morning, but things were going fine generally on a 4-hour EASY routine.

About a month ago, they started wanting to feed much more than every 4 hours.  It interrupted naps and during their afternoon nap, they'd often wake up to breastfeed and then go back to sleep to finish their nap!  Not ideal, but we got through it!  I figured it was a growth spurt and would pass.  A month on, they are still feeding about every 3 hours... sometimes 3 1/2 if they have lots of solids and occasionally twice in the night.     I just can't get them to 4 hours on most occasions.

I was wondering... could it be that there's a limit to how much each breast can produce for a single feed?  (I feed them one after another, with a boob each!)  I understand that breasts produce milk continuously and I have no doubt that I can produce enough for them both over a 24 hour period, but I just wondered if this may be why they need to feed more regularly than they did a month ago?  Presumably they need to drink more milk than they did a month ago so could it be that they're drinking max capacity from a single breast at each feed and therefore needing to eat more often?

I'm not sure if I'm making sense!  I hope you'll know what I mean!!

Vicky
x

[VickyB20]

Thanks Francis!  I LOVE breastfeeding them.  Soooo much more enjoyable (and much easier) than bottlefeeding two!
Vicky
xx

[Samuel's mum]

Basically your instincts are right. While a woman's supply is very much about demand and fairly limitless (and certainly able to feed multiples happily) when it comes to intervals between feeds there are some limitations.

This is a paragraph from a post I wrote the other day when someone was asking 'can everyone manage a 4hr EASY?'

Annoyingly not every bf baby can manage a 4hr EASY purely in terms of the feeding schedule and still get enough calories in the day. It basically comes down to a combination of milk supply and breast storage capacity. Tracy believed that if you extend the intervals - the baby will take more milk and everything will settle out. And while this is true up to a point we have received new information about breast storage capacity that was revealed after Tracy's passing - so obviously we can never know how it might have affected her thinking. A team in Australia led by Dr Peter Hartmann did an extensive study of breasts and milk storage and discovered a massive variation between different successful nursing mothers. The number of milk ducts (previously thought to be pretty similar from woman to woman , about 15-20) were discovered in his sample to range from 4 to 20. The average being about 9. This massive range basically meant that while all nursing mothers will produce similiar quantities of milk in 24 hours there will be an enormous difference in the breasts ability to store milk between feeds. It's true that some milk is made continuously including during the feed but the storage capacity (which isn't about breast size and can't be seen from the outside) will make a difference to intervals.

So for some women in order to get the required number of oz/calories in a day - there will need to do more feeds. In some cases a baby will be unhappy about trying to stretch to 4 hrs, in other cases they won't mind but will want to make up for it elsewhere.

But that's not to say that you are in a doomed situation. The amount a bf baby consumes doesn't increase forever. In fact after 6 months it doesn't increase much at all if anything and does decrease slightly as solids increase. So I would feel free to try and work a bit more at this: weaning the night feeds and trying to increase calories at each feed (e.g. attempt some pumping after a feed to send increase supply signals to your breasts i.e. engineer your own version of a growth spurt). Perhaps consider how much water you drink, even think about taking some fenugreek or a product with fenugreek and blessed thistle in combination if you aren't already.
I'm just saying although your hunch may be right - it doesn't mean you haven't got a bit of wiggle room here.

(And you definitely need a mega congratulations for being ebf with twins. You are an inspiration.)

[Erin (redstarfalling)]

Agreed Vicky - you're awesome! 

[EllenS]

Thanks again for helpful info, Emma - I'm also hoping that pumping + herbs for me & solids for baby will help my 6mo give up the night feed she added recently.  (we also dropped back to 3-3.5hrs)

These boards are so helpful!

[VickyB20]

Thank you!  That's very interesting information and some ideas I'll try too.
Thanks for all your kind words too.  But I really don't think I need any congratulations - I'm just doing as nature intended and am lucky to have had very few problems.  (And the thought of washing and sterilising 14 bottles every day is quite an incentive to get through the harder times!!)
Vicky
x

[yaya]

oohh I wanted to cngratulate too, I admire you!!