to Suckle for more about the pros and cons of using dummies. The section on Step Two (pages 65–111) also has lots of suggestions about calming and comforting your baby without feeding him.
Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is really very different from bottle-feeding in the first few weeks, and it is best to put all ideas about schedules out of your head for that time. Be assured that your baby will develop a feeding pattern and that it will become easier to establish a routine; the problems occur when you try to establish a clock-governed routine in the first six weeks.
WHY DOES EARLY SCHEDULE-FEEDING FAIL FOR SOME BABIES?
Trying to Go Too Long Between Feeds
The first suggestion you might hear is to try to ‘space feeds out’ – the idea being that you can store up milk and also get your baby to be really hungry so he will take more at a feed.
Unfortunately, breasts are not like taps; milk is not just produced when the baby feeds. Breastmilk is being made all the time, and stored between feeds in the breast. How much is made depends on how full the breast is. If the baby does not feed very often, then the breasts will fill and milk production will decrease.
Recent research has also found that women vary enormously in their storage capacity; with one woman able to store 300 per cent more than another woman, for instance, and this capacity has nothing to do with breast size. All women are capable of producing the same amount of milk over 24 hours, but women who have larger storage capacities can go longer between feeds and still give their babies enough to eat, while others will need to feed more often to deliver the same amount of milk to their babies.1
Women with larger storage capacities might well be able to schedule feed – but, ironically, the chances are that their babies will go for longer between feeds anyway! Problems happen for those with smaller capacity, where stretching feeds will ultimately result in less milk being produced in 24 hours.
During pregnancy, lots of milk-making cells are created inside the breast – more than your baby is likely to need. In the early weeks after birth, some of those milk-making cells will be switched on, the rest switched off according to how frequently your baby feeds. While this is happening, your milk supply is kept high by the hormone prolactin
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