Breastfeeding Approaches and Goals, Explained

Breastfeeding Isn't One Decision — It's a Combination That Shifts Over Time

Most breastfeeding advice tends to treat it as a single choice: are you nursing, or are you pumping? And then leaves "what happens"/your output as the result of that.

In our view, there are actually two separate dimensions running alongside each other in breastfeeding — how you remove milk from your breasts (your approach), and how much your body produces relative to what baby drinks (your supply goal). We have broken these down into 4 approaches and 3 goals, that's 12 possible combinations — and most mums move through several of them across the breastfeeding journey, often for reasons that have as much to do with the rest of life as with breastfeeding itself: recovery, returning to work, or simply your lifestyle in whatever season you're in.

Here's the full breakdown of both, and how they fit together.

The 4 Approaches to Breastfeeding

1. Exclusive Latching

Feeding baby 100% on demand, at the breast, except in very few circumstances.

• Advantages: Tends to result in exactly enough milk for baby's needs, since supply naturally regulates to demand. No bottles or pump parts to wash. Easy to travel with baby.
• Disadvantages: Baby must be with mum for every feed. Feeding times are unpredictable.

2. Primary Latching

Nursing directly most of the time, with pumping to cover any missed latches — usually timed to when baby would otherwise have fed.

• Advantages: No rigid feeding or pumping schedule to stick to. No need to figure out how to fully empty by pump alone, and any type of pump works fine for occasional use. Still easy to travel with baby.
• Disadvantages: Feeding times remain unpredictable, same as exclusive latching.

3. Primary Pumping

Pumping at regular, planned times, with latching happening whenever convenient rather than on a fixed schedule.

• Advantages: Predictable pumping times. Can often pump fewer times a day than baby actually feeds.
• Disadvantages: The pumping schedule itself becomes fairly rigid.

4. Exclusive Pumping

No latching at all — baby is fed entirely on expressed milk.

• Advantages: Predictable pumping times. Can pump fewer times a day than baby's feeding frequency.
• Disadvantages: A rigid pumping schedule, and breasts need to be fully emptied at least twice a day to protect supply.

The 3 Supply Goals

Separately from how you feed, there's the question of how much you produce relative to what baby actually needs.

1. Perfectly Enough

Supply matches almost exactly what baby drinks daily, possibly with a small 30–50ml buffer.

• Advantages: Baby always gets milk suited to their actual needs that day. This goal works with any of the 4 approaches above. Lower risk of engorgement and related issues.
• Disadvantages: Requires planning ahead for travel or time away from baby, since there's little to no stash buffer.

2. Oversupply

Regularly producing more than baby drinks daily.

• Advantages: Gives you the option to stop lactating earlier while baby continues on a frozen stash. Also means you're prepared for unexpected, prolonged separation from baby.
• Disadvantages: Requires pumping daily to manage the extra supply, even if you're otherwise exclusively latching. Managing a freezer stash takes ongoing effort. Higher risk of engorgement and related issues.

3. Undersupply

Regularly producing less than baby drinks daily.

• Advantages: Greater flexibility with your lifestyle, since there's fewer times of daily pumping or feeding to manage.
• Disadvantages: Requires supplementing with formula or donor milk.

How Approaches and Goals Work Together — and Why That Matters

With 4 approaches and 3 goals, there are 12 possible combinations, and which one fits changes as your circumstances do. There's no single "correct" combination, only the one that fits your current season, and the reasons for shifting often have as much to do with the rest of your life as with breastfeeding itself.

A common arc looks something like this:

The first two weeks. Recovery is the priority, and both you and baby are still learning to latch well. An undersupply goal   paired with exclusive latching lets you focus entirely on establishing a good latch, without the added pressure of hitting a higher supply target at the same time.

Once you've recovered somewhat from delivery. With latching established and your body settling into its own rhythm, many mums shift toward a "perfectly enough" goal, often with primary or exclusive latching — supply naturally regulates to match baby's needs with the least ongoing effort.

Ahead of returning to work. Some mums have an oversupply goal here, to build a backup stash before a schedule change makes regular pumping harder to maintain. This is usually also the time they decide whether they would like to shift from primary latching to primary pumping, to encourage baby to take bottles.

After returning to work. As the new schedule settles in, some mums find that pumping can't always happen as regularly and/or often as it ideally should, and many come to accept a shift toward undersupply — not as a failure, but as a realistic accommodation to a genuinely different season.

None of this needs to be decided once and locked in. What fit in week two may not fit by month four, and what you're aiming for at month six may shift again after that — and that's completely normal, not a sign that something's gone wrong.

Getting Support That Moves With You

This is exactly why breastfeeding and new parenthood seems so hard to break down or understand. Whenever you talk to other friends, relatives or colleagues, they seem to be describing a focus or approach which somehow doesn't match with yours. And a single, one-off lactation consultation often falls short — it can only ever address where you are in this moment, not where you'll be a few months from now when your combination of approach and goal shifts again.

For this reason, we structure the support we offer parents in a one-stop, ongoing, evolving way, what we call our Stay-Out Confinement Nanny Services. Breastfeeding doesn't happen in isolation from the rest of your recovery and your newborn's care, and these packages simply come with more visits and more hands-on time overall than a dedicated lactation package alone — on top of 30-days access to Pocket Nanny. This allows more natural room to revisit your approach and goal together as they shift.

Our dedicated Lactation Consultant Services packages of 2-3 visits also offer this same kind of ongoing, evolving support, and are worth considering if breastfeeding specifically — rather than the fuller picture of newborn care and recovery — is where you want to go deepest. And if pumping is (or is becoming) a bigger part of your picture, our Exclusive Pumping Support goes deeper still on the pump-specific side of things: improving the efficiency of each pump, learning how to reduce the number of pumps without losing supply, and more.