Question for the breastfeeding experts

My friend's milk has just come in with a vengeance - her baby is 4 days old. Baby feeds every 3 hours, and my friend has so much milk that her boobs are getting really engorged. She just feeds one side (cos it never 'runs out') and then does the other side the next feed. Which means that the boob that she didn't just feed off gets really full and painful.

So she was asking if she should/could be feeding for say 10 mins on one side and then switch to the other.

My boy always fed one side then I offered him the other and he often took it, so I couldn't answer her question! I guess I didn't have as much milk lol.

So I'm asking the ohbaby experts.... what do you guys think?

Yeah, I was going to say it will settle down in a few days and to just hang in there. I'm a fan of empty the boob (so to speak as you cant really empty them).

It will settle down. Tell her not to switch sides before baby's "finished" on the first side though, cos that could mean baby would only get the watery foremilk and not the lovely fatty hindmilk - not great for baby's weight gains etc.

When you say baby feeds every 3 hours, do you mean that's when she's letting it feed or does that happen to be when baby demands it? If she's trying to space out the feeds already (if that's the case, please try to gently discourage her from doing that if you can) then in the short term that could be contributing to her engorgement (but would be bad for her supply in the longer run).

As always - have a read of the relevant kellymom page
(Although I just had a read of it and for the first time ever I'm not 100% comfortable with recommending that page, just because so early on I would be VERY cautious about the use of a cabbage leaf compress.)

I also only fed off one side per feed until DD was about a month old and started wanting the other side too. In saying that I never noticed my milk coming in (but it must have seeing as she is still BFing at almost a year old)