What are frequent flexible breastfeeds?

If you are a breastfeeding woman, offering baby your breast just whenever you think it will dial him down makes life easiest, and sleep easiest, for your family.

Your breast is a powerful tool for keeping baby dialled down. Apart from helping to ensure your milk supply and baby's weight gain, frequent flexible breastfeeds have a wonderful side benefit: the sleep regulators (both the body clock and sleep pressure) kick in easily in a dialled down baby.

Offering frequent flexible breastfeeds is so helpful for families that it really is your #1 baby-sleep superpower, as well as a breastfeeding superpower.

Your baby’s sleep needs decrease throughout the first year of life. This means that baby will drop off to sleep at the breast less and less often during the day. But many women breastfeed their baby to sleep into toddlerhood and beyond. They find it easiest. When they are ready to stop – they wean.

How are frequent flexible breastfeeds different to demand breastfeeding?

The idea of frequent flexible breastfeeds is different to what is usually thought of as 'demand breastfeeding'. The latter tends to emphasise waiting for baby to cue before you offer, and also often comes with the unhelpful belief that each breastfeed is supposed be a satisfying meal of milk.

Frequent flexible breastfeeding doesn't use the saying "he can't be hungry, because he's just fed." You can offer your breast again just whenever it suits you and your baby, even if baby has just breastfed or puked.

The term 'demand breastfeeding' might also seem to suggest that your baby is wilful or demanding. But your little one unfurls out of millions of years of evolutionary creativity, as if life itself is rising up through her. From birth, the human baby communicates her powerful biological needs through bodily signals and by dialling up, not because she is wilful or demanding, but because she needs to be drawn in closely to your body and your world to survive and thrive.

Breastfeeds don't need to last long

Often you'll hear that a breastfeed is like a meal-time, when your baby should fill up on milk. But the idea that a breastfeed has to be a satisfying meal comes out of the routine-based approaches to infantcare and breastfeeding from the 1950s and 1960s. It places pressure on both yourself and your baby, and can even cause feeding problems and low supply, actually.

Most women need to offer each breast around 12 times in a 24-hour period, without particularly counting or focussing on this, in order to maintain their supply and their baby's weight gain.

Breastfeeds don't need to last for long - although there'll be some feeds when you're happy to settle down into a relaxed long breastfeeding cuddle together. The main thing is to feel you can use the breast to dial your baby down. Your baby might be on the breast just for a brief moment, and you might also offer the breast again even though you offered just a short time ago! Over a 24-hour period (if underlying clinical problems have been dealt with) you can trust your baby to take the milk he needs.

You can’t overfeed a breastfed baby

You really can't overfeed a breastfed baby. Some breastfed babies become very chubby, but this is not a problem and doesn't increase the risk of obesity later on.

Your baby will let you know if she doesn’t want the breast, by back arching, turning her head away, tensing up, clenching her fists, splaying her fingers, or keeping her little mouth firmly closed. These are not signs of reflux or allergy or gut pain.

Make sure you're not accidentally pressuring baby to the breast

It’s natural to find ourselves feeling rather desperate to get the baby to sleep at times. Sometimes, we might have baby weight gain worries. In the hope of sending baby to sleep, or because you're worried about weight, you might be tempted to encourage baby to continue to breastfeed, even when he's pulling off or looking unhappy about it. But unfortunately, any pressure with breastfeeds can backfire, and result not just in a conditioned dialling up at the breast, but worsened sleep.

Often little ones dial up because they are needing a richer sensory motor experience, particularly when you're inside the home, which is a low sensory environment. But they'll take the breast because it's the most interesting thing going on!

It's also true that your baby might need only a very brief moment napping at the breast to take the edge off his rising sleep pressure. Then he's ready for (yet another) sensory motor adventure.

Recommended resources

Most common breastfeeding problem #2: not offering the breast frequently and flexibly enough

The 12 steps of frequent flexible breastfeeding (which make life easier, not harder!)