Figure 3.
Breast milk storage capacity and milk intake. The mean SEM percent of available milk taken at a breastfeed by babies who take breastfeeds 76 mL (high av. feed) or 76 mL (low av. feed) of mothers with total (left and right) breast milk storage capacity 360 mL (high storage capacity) or 360 mL (low storage capacity). Numbers in parentheses are % of babies in category.
*Significantly different from low av. feed (P .001).
The left and right breasts rarely produce the same amount of milk. Anecdotally, mothers often refer to having one “good” breast, or that the baby prefers one breast to the other. Data on 24-hour milk production of individual breasts confirm that one breast is usually more productive than the other—in seven out of 10 mothers, it is the right breast that is more productive. This difference is not associated with handedness, nor do the mothers favour the more productive breast by preferentially offering it before the other.33
Breastfeeding Patterns
Current recommendations are to feed babies “on de- mand,”49 therefore, there is no prescribed pattern for breastfeeding babies. Detailed studies show that not only do babies show a three-fold variation in the amount they take per day, they also show a wide variation in their patterns of milk intake.33,50 During a meal or a breastfeeding session, the baby may feed from one breast only (an unpaired breastfeed), feed from both breasts within 30 minutes (two paired breastfeeds), or the baby may have a cluster of breastfeeds (feeding again from the first breast within 30 minutes of feeding on the second). In a recent study of exclusively breastfeeding babies between 1 and 6 months old in Western Australia,33 13% of babies always took paired breastfeeds, 30% of babies always took unpaired breastfeeds, and most babies had paired and unpaired breastfeeds. On average, the babies took 11 breastfeeds per day, but ranged from six to 18 feeds per day. They took these breastfeeds as eight meals (or breastfeeding sessions) per day on average, but ranged