Nursing more often than "the schedule" stipulates

Yes, I know the title is confusing but here's what I mean: Do you ever go back to breastfeeding more times a day once you already established less feedings per day? Say, you're nursing 5 times a day. Does it make sense to ever suddenly nurse 9 times a day? I think this would be ok even though it sounds "off schedule".

First of all, nursing doesn't have to be on a schedule like a high school curriculum. It's ok to nurse 8 times one day and then 20 times the next day. I do understand that it's nice to have a routine to rely on for stability. I enjoy a relaxed schedule because I work full time and we do need some sense of order. But sometimes I have to break out of that model. Like I've said numerous times, relaxed schedules are way better than fixed, rigid ones.

Like this week. Sam is nearly 15 months old. At this point he nurses once in the morning, once after work (sometimes not) and once before bed. Then he'll nurse once more during the early AM hours. This has been going on for about a month or two now. But last week he got pneumonia on top of an ear infection. And just when he was about to finish his 10-day course of antibiotics, he developed a stomach virus of some sort (we don't know yet if it's shigella - we'll get the results back one of these days). For the past two days he refused to touch any solid meals and would very reluctantly drink from a cup (only a few sips at a time).

I was scared he'd get dehydrated without the fluids and nutrition. So I turned to breastfeeding to help me out here. I just nursed him a bunch of times a day and I felt so good doing it. I was so happy I had this backup ammo to ease me out of this frightening situation. Sam would nurse almost always, even though he wouldn't want to drink other fluids. And he needed the liquids!

According to my baby's pediatrician, when a child is vomiting and or having diarrhea, the number one fluid of choice is breastmilk. Number two is Pedialyte, and number three is any other drink. I was surprised to hear him say that since it's known that many pediatricians aren't major proponents of breastfeeding. Sure they'll tell you to nurse your baby but they don't really encourage you or help you out with difficulties. Like this doctor had no problem telling me to just give formula bottles if I wanted him to drink more (as if that would work - he hardly enjoyed drinking EBM bottles!).

So we basically nursed a lot the past two days. In between, I gave him a sport popup water bottle with Pedialyte inside (that gets the fluids down a lot faster than a bottle or sippy cup would). He was able to keep some foods down, like corn flakes, baby cereal puffs, and potato sticks (the snack type that's similar to potato chips).

Now I've got one more reason for why I'm still breastfeeding Sam at 15 months :)

Sleeping through the night and breastfeeding correlation

I randomly thought about this the other day and I wonder if this idea is of any significance. I noticed that mothers of babies who sleep through the night early on (sleeping longer than 6-8 hour stretches, in this case) are less likely to nurse their babies past the half-year mark. It's just that whoever I talk to whose babies were such good sleepers as newborns and young infants said they didn't nurse beyond a few months.

Here's why I think that happens. It's widely known that milk production gets a real boost during the nighttime when prolactin, the milk-making hormone, is at its best. Nursing (or even pumping) at night really gives your milk supply an edge even beyond the nighttime. Now, if a mothers isn't breastfeeding her baby at night because the child sleeps through the night (and why wake a sleeping baby?) her prolactin doesn't really get chance to shine.

If milk supply isn't given that extra oomph from nighttime nursing, it might not function so well during the day. This is even more hampered if a mother works full time and has to rely on pumping during the day to keep up her milk supply. If a mother can stay at home with her child and nurse on demand then this probably isn't such an issue because a nursing baby can effectively extract enough milk (whereas a pump doesn't do that great of a job).

Now this is far from a scientific fact; it's just a speculation on my part. What do you think? Do you have evidence to support or disprove this claim? If yes, share it! I will try to conduct a poll about this on a breastfeeding website and share the results here.