arguments about feeding

"Melissa" wrote in message news:nJbTa.118430$Ph3.15241@sccrnsc04...
"Joshua Levy" wrote
I vote for (c): Buy or borrow the book THE BABY WHISPERER by Hogg,
and use it's advice to understand your baby better. ...

Except that the author has no expertice except for as a mother.

Wrong. She worked for years as a nanny. It is interesting to compare
her experience with Dr. Sears (for example). He is a doctor for 1000s
of children, but as a doctor only sees them for a few minutes every
couple of months. Hogg on the other hand has helped raise scores of
children, spending days, weeks, or months with each one.

So would you rather take advice from someone who sees kids maybe 20
minutes once or twice a year? Or someone who took care of a baby
for months at a time? It's easy for Sears to say vague things like
and let the parents deal with it. But Hogg was the person raising
the baby. Her advice is specific and useful, not vague.

She
advocates such things as nursing for 18 minutes on a side because, according
to her, that's when the foremilk turns to hindmilk.

Wrong. I challenge you to find any part of her books which says this.

The LC who runs my bf group says to burn that book
(and BabyWise, while we're at it) and stick with your gut (or Dr. Sears'
books). You know what the right thing to do is so trust yourself.

Ah! Have you even read this book? If not, why comment on it?

As for doing the right thing, the OP suspects that she is not, that
is why she asked the question. The answer is simple (if politically
incorrect in some circles): feed a baby when the baby is hungry, NOT
everytime the baby cries. Babys cry for many reasons, and there is no
advantage to feeding a gassy baby, a bored baby or a tired baby (for
example).

Joshua Levy

Jenn wrote in message ...
In article , Joshua
Levy writes


THE BABY WHISPERER contains lots of great advice to help you understand
why your baby is crying.

Doesn't tell you that the author left her children to go live on another
continent though does it? Or that she was investigated by Social
Services for suspected child neglect? Or that she refused to pay any
maintenance? Didn't think so.

Translation: you don't know anything bad about the book, so you need
to badmouth the author. It is certainly true that Hogg divorced her
husband, then later moved to the US, where she restarted her career
as a nanny and later an author. It is certainly true that her left
behind ex-husband is now unhappy and complains to all who will listen.
(Do you believe that people should not be alowed to divorce? That
divorcees should not be alowed to move or start new careers? I don't.)

However, the question should be: is the book useful to someone in the
original posters situation. The answer is "yes", in a big way! While
other books say vague things about feeding when the baby is hungry,
THE BABY WHISPERER says specific things about what too look for in a
baby to see if the baby is hungry. Not just crying, but body language
as well.

If you really think that feeding a baby every time it cries is a good
idea, then why not try the following experiment. Every time you say
something, eat something! Remember, crying is all a small baby can do,
so they cry to communicate all their wants. So feeding them whenever
they cry is a silly for them, as eating every time you talk is silly
for you.

Joshua Levy

In article ,
(Joshua Levy) wrote:

Except that babies don't eat if they are not hungry and babies who have a
problem *other* than being hungry won't be pacified by being fed.

This is well known not to be true. Babies have a suck reflex.

I think you are both right. A baby *may* be comforted by suckling when the
problem is not hunger, but IME it won't be for long. When DS developed wind
at 2am one night, we had no idea -- we just thought he was hungry as the cry
was so similar to his hunger cry. Suckling comforted him, but he would
quickly wake up crying again. We stayed in the feed-sleep-cry cycle for two
hours until the bubble went down!

Sure, but we're talk about advice to feed the baby every time the baby
cries, and that is wrong.

Were we? My response was:

Barring other causes, yes [feed when he cries].

You are correct to say that there are other cues (rooting behaviour,
snuffling, etc) before the baby gets hungry, but when the baby is feeding very
frequently, you tend to try to hold off responding till you HAVE to.

Even during the biggest of growth spurts, a baby that age does not need
to eat every hour. They've gotten in the habit of eating every hour,
that is all. Sure a growth spurt may make a baby eat more and more
often than otherwise, but every hour? That's learned behavior.

How do you know that? I can agree that a one-year-old might not need to eat
every hour, but would hesitate to make the same claim about a six-week-old.
Yes, the disadvantage of demand-feeding is the frequency, but it is outweighed
by the advantages:

- better establishment of, and fewer ongoing problems with, supply
- quicker return to birth weight
- breastfeeding continues for longer
- less engorgement and nipple soreness in early weeks
- more effective prevention and treatment of jaundice (hyperbilirubinaemia,
not the serious kind) than other supplements

I refer you to chapter 8 of
http://www.who.int/child-adolescent-...TION/WHO_CHD_9
8.9.pdf

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"...children should continue to be breastfed... for up to two years of age
or beyond." -- Innocenti Declaration, Florence, 1 August 1990

Circe wrote:

Joshua Levy wrote:




Even during the biggest of growth spurts, a baby that age does not
need to eat every hour. They've gotten in the habit of eating every
hour, that is all. Sure a growth spurt may make a baby eat more and
more often than otherwise, but every hour? That's learned behavior.



Nonsense. First of all, a 6-week-old is too young to have learned any
behavior. Newborns haven't lived long enough to establish any real patterns
of behavior. And since they can't read a clock, it is absurd to suggest that
they are eating every hour because they have been *taught* to. A baby can't
possibly be demanding a feed on an hourly basis simply because an hour has
elapsed because they don't have the first clue how long an hour is. There is
obviously something biological telling them they are hungry/thirsty/want to
suck after that hour has passed.

Second of all, during a growth spurt, it is *entirely* possible and even
normal for a baby to eat every hour or so. The reason is because while
supply is catching up to demand, there often isn't very much milk available
at each feeding and so the baby doesn't always get completely full. As a
result, baby tends to need lots of short feeds to build supply so that the
feeds can space out again to longer, more complete feeds.




Heck, my son ate every hour on the hour during the day from birth to 2.5
months. I never even
noticed any growth spurts - I mean, how much more often could he
*possibly* have eaten?

Clisby

Joshua Levy wrote:
"Circe" wrote in message
news:_PXSa.14436$u51.12043@fed1read05...
Joshua Levy wrote:
I vote for (c): Buy or borrow the book THE BABY WHISPERER by Hogg,
and use it's advice to understand your baby better. Your answer
(a) is obviously wrong buy it shows the underlying problem you need
to fix. You should feed the baby whenever the baby is hungry (NOT
whenever the baby cries!) Babies cry for many reasons. If you feed
the baby every time she cries, you will feed him when he is bored,
gassy, hungry, sleepy, etc.

Except that babies don't eat if they are not hungry and babies who
have a problem *other* than being hungry won't be pacified by being
fed.

This is well known not to be true. Babies have a suck reflex.
If you get the teat in the right place, the baby will suck.
(It's called a reflex because the baby doesn't choose to do it,
the baby's body just reacts this way, and it doesn't matter
if the baby is hungry or not.)

But if there is some other problem, feeding will rarely pacify the baby for
any length of time. While it is true that babies might initially nurse when
they are crying for some other reason, I have never found it to work for
more than a few seconds if there was some other problem.

Sometimes,
a not-very-hungry baby will nurse for comfort without getting much
milk, but there's nothing wrong with this.

True, but if the baby was crying because it was gassy (for example),
then sucking is not going to help. Ditto if the baby was crying
because it was bored, or for some other reason.

Agreed. Now you're validating what I said above. Nursing won't help if
hunger or a need to suck was not the problem. So what's the problem with
*offering* to breastfeed if you think it's possible that hunger or a desire
to suck is what's making the baby cry? I grant, if it's quite clear to you
that hunger/sucking need *isn't* what's troubling the baby, offering to feed
would be a nonsensical first response. But in my experience, when young
babies are crying, they are nearly always doing so because they are hungry
or want to suck. Breastfeeding nearly always worked. When I tried other
responses first with my very young babies, they tended to keep right on
crying. I quickly figured out that trying the least likely solution first
just meant having a baby who was unhappy for longer. Why put myself and the
baby through more unhappiness than absolutely necessary?

Babies *do* occasionally need to suck even
when they are not hungry and since some won't take a pacifier or
suck a pinky--two of mine wouldn't--nursing them is the only way to
meet this need.

Sure, but we're talk about advice to feed the baby every time the baby
cries, and that is wrong. Occasionally sucking for comfort is fine,
but has little to do with advice to feed a baby every time the baby
cries.

But if the baby cries and nursing pacifies him, it doesn't matter whether he
was hungry or just wanted to suck. I don't know what you mean by
"occasionally", anyway. I see nothing, frankly, wrong with offering to nurse
as a first response to crying unless it is absolutely clear that there is
some other problem. As I said above, my experience with three babies is that
nursing worked more often than not to stop the crying (suggesting that it
*did* meet their needs) and that when it didn't, it was always quickly
obvious that there was some other problem that I needed to set about
addressing instead.

The baby in question is at the perfect age for a growth spurt, as
other posters have noted. It is entirely possible that he is hungry
every hour during this time. It will pass.

Even during the biggest of growth spurts, a baby that age does not
need to eat every hour. They've gotten in the habit of eating every
hour, that is all. Sure a growth spurt may make a baby eat more and
more often than otherwise, but every hour? That's learned behavior.

Nonsense. First of all, a 6-week-old is too young to have learned any
behavior. Newborns haven't lived long enough to establish any real patterns
of behavior. And since they can't read a clock, it is absurd to suggest that
they are eating every hour because they have been *taught* to. A baby can't
possibly be demanding a feed on an hourly basis simply because an hour has
elapsed because they don't have the first clue how long an hour is. There is
obviously something biological telling them they are hungry/thirsty/want to
suck after that hour has passed.

Second of all, during a growth spurt, it is *entirely* possible and even
normal for a baby to eat every hour or so. The reason is because while
supply is catching up to demand, there often isn't very much milk available
at each feeding and so the baby doesn't always get completely full. As a
result, baby tends to need lots of short feeds to build supply so that the
feeds can space out again to longer, more complete feeds.

And finally, babies get thirsty as well as hungry. It is quite possible on a
hot day for a baby to be thirsty if not hungry every hour, even in the
absence of a growth spurt. *I* get thirsty every hour or so and want
something to drink about that often when it's hot, so I see nothing
particularly bizarre or objectionable about the idea that a tiny baby might
desire the same.
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [7/22/97], Aurora [7/19/99], and Vernon's [3/2/02] mom)
See us at http://photos.yahoo.com/guavaln

This week's special at the English Language Butcher Shop:
"How a seller can improve their home's value" -- newspaper headline

What does it all mean? I have *no* idea. But it's my life and I like it.

In article ,
says...

This is well known not to be true. Babies have a suck reflex.
If you get the teat in the right place, the baby will suck.

Baloney. In all four of my children, if they were upset for some
other reason (diaper, hot, cranky, colic, or what have you) sticking
a nipple in their mouths only made their cries sound muffled. That's
not saying that they never nursed for comfort, because they did, but
if they really wanted something else, nursing would not pacify them.

Michelle
Flutist
--
In my heart. By my side.
Never apart. AP with Pride!
Katrina Marie (10/19/96)
Xander Ryan (09/22/98 - 02/23/99)
Gareth Xander (07/17/00)
Zachary Mitchell (01/12/94, began fostering 09/05/01)
Theona Alexis (06/03/03)

In article ,
says...

However, the question should be: is the book useful to someone in the
original posters situation. The answer is "yes", in a big way! While
other books say vague things about feeding when the baby is hungry,
THE BABY WHISPERER says specific things about what too look for in a
baby to see if the baby is hungry. Not just crying, but body language
as well.

You're obviously doing what you have accused other of -- badmouthing
a book without reading it.

None of my baby books say vague thing about feeding when the baby is
hungry, and they discuss in depth the body language of a hungry baby
BEFORE it starts crying, which is a LATE sign of hunger.

Michelle
Flutist

--
In my heart. By my side.
Never apart. AP with Pride!
Katrina Marie (10/19/96)
Xander Ryan (09/22/98 - 02/23/99)
Gareth Xander (07/17/00)
Zachary Mitchell (01/12/94, began fostering 09/05/01)
Theona Alexis (06/03/03)

Clisby Williams wrote:
Heck, my son ate every hour on the hour during the day from birth to
2.5 months. I never even
noticed any growth spurts - I mean, how much more often could he
*possibly* have eaten?

Sounds a bit like my oldest. He might have eaten closer to every 90 minutes
during wakeful periods (which weren't always during the day to start with),
but he liked to nurse for 30-45 minutes each time, so I spent a *lot* of
times during those first few weeks nursing him. My younger two nursed less
frequently--more like every 2-2.5 hours most of the time, with some shorter
spacings.

But yeah, some babies just like to nurse very often or for a long time. All
of mine would have wailed like the dickens if I'd tried to something *other*
than feed them when they were hungry or reduce the length of their nursing
sessions. Certainly, breastfeeding less wouldn't have made *anybody* happy.
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [7/22/97], Aurora [7/19/99], and Vernon's [3/2/02] mom)
See us at http://photos.yahoo.com/guavaln

This week's special at the English Language Butcher Shop:
"How a seller can improve their home's value" -- newspaper headline

What does it all mean? I have *no* idea. But it's my life and I like it.

Michelle J. Haines wrote:
Baloney. In all four of my children, if they were upset for some
other reason (diaper, hot, cranky, colic, or what have you) sticking
a nipple in their mouths only made their cries sound muffled.

Been there!

--
Suzanne http://cshardie.tripod.com
sittin' on the dock of eBay, watching the bids roll away
--Richard Powers, "Literary Devices"

Michelle J. Haines wrote:
Baloney. In all four of my children, if they were upset for some
other reason (diaper, hot, cranky, colic, or what have you) sticking
a nipple in their mouths only made their cries sound muffled. That's
not saying that they never nursed for comfort, because they did, but
if they really wanted something else, nursing would not pacify them.

When he was 9-12 months old, my youngest would *bite* me if I tried to get
him to nurse when he wasn't interested. I learned that lesson pretty darned
fast!
--
Be well, Barbara
(Julian [7/22/97], Aurora [7/19/99], and Vernon's [3/2/02] mom)
See us at http://photos.yahoo.com/guavaln

This week's special at the English Language Butcher Shop:
"How a seller can improve their home's value" -- newspaper headline

What does it all mean? I have *no* idea. But it's my life and I like it.