Help produce more breastmilk
Low Milk Supply | WIC Breastfeeding Support
Many moms worry about low milk supply, but most of the time your body makes exactly what your baby needs, even if you don't realize it. There are also ways to tell if your baby is getting enough milk. If you aren't making enough, there are ways you can build your supply. And your WIC breastfeeding staff is always there to help!
Am I Making Enough Milk?
First, look for these signs that your baby is getting enough milk. For example, pay attention to the number of wet and dirty diapers and your baby's weight gain.
Things you should NOT worry about:
- How your breasts feel. Your breasts will feel softer and less full as your milk supply adjusts to your baby's needs. This does not mean you have low supply.
- If your baby nurses for shorter periods of time, such as only 5 minutes on each breast.
- If your baby's feeds are bunched together. This is called cluster feeding and happens when your baby starts nursing more often and for longer.
This can happen in the evenings or because of growth spurts.
- Not getting much milk when you express. Your baby is much more effective than a pump or hand expression at getting out milk. Find tips to help you pump.
If you are still concerned, talk to your baby's doctor about their growth.
Causes of Low Milk Supply
While most moms make plenty of milk, some do have low milk supply. This might happen if you:
- Limit your baby's breastfeeding sessions. Remember, the more you feed on demand, the more milk you make.
- Give your baby infant formula instead of breastfeeding.
- Introduce solid foods before baby is 4-6 months old.
- Take certain birth control pills or other medicine.
- Don't get enough sleep.
- Drink alcohol or smoke.
- Have had breast surgery.
Talk to your doctor if you have hepatitis B or C, herpes, or diabetes. These conditions may also affect milk supply.
Increasing Your Milk Supply
Breastfeeding frequently—especially in the first hours, days, and weeks—is the main way to increase your milk supply. Your body will make milk to meet your baby's demand.
Try these tips to help you make more milk:
- Breastfeed every time your baby is hungry. In the early weeks, your baby will eat 8-12 times every 24 hours. It's best not to put your baby on a strict feeding schedule. Follow your baby's cues, and let your baby tell you when it's time to eat.
- Make sure your baby is latching well.
- Offer both breasts at each feeding. Let your baby finish the first side, then offer the other side.
- Empty your breasts at each feeding.
Hand express or pump after a feeding to draw out all the milk and signal your body to make more. - Avoid bottles and pacifiers in the early weeks. Feed your baby from your breast whenever you can.
- Get plenty of sleep, and eat a healthy diet.
- Pump or express your milk. Pumping or expressing milk frequently between nursing sessions, and consistently when you're away from your baby, can help build your milk supply.
- Relax and massage. Relax, hold your baby skin-to-skin, and massage your breasts before feeding to encourage your milk to let down.
- Take care of yourself. Get plenty of rest, eat well, drink enough fluids, and let others help you.
Consider Charting Your Progress
Record how often your baby is breastfeeding, for how long, and on which sides. If you are supplementing with infant formula, record how much your baby is getting and decrease the infant formula as your milk supply increases.
WIC breastfeeding staff can help you determine how much infant formula your baby needs.
Still Have Questions?
Contact your WIC breastfeeding expert. They can talk to you about supply concerns and give you tips to increase your supply to meet your baby's needs.
Making Milk Expression Work for You
Expressing milk is an important tool in your breastfeeding journey. Ask your WIC breastfeeding staff about practical tips to help you with pumping and hand expression. WIC staff may also suggest pumping to help you address common issues. These include relieving or preventing engorgement and building your milk supply. Pumping also lets you provide breast milk for your baby when you are apart.
Read more about how you can make pumping work for you when facing challenges, plus other helpful tips.
Relieving or Preventing Engorgement
Emptying milk from your breasts regularly will help keep your breasts from becoming engorged. If they do get engorged, pumping or expressing milk can help by removing some of your breast milk.
Here's how you can use pumping to help:
- Hand express or pump a little milk to soften the breast, areola, and nipple before breastfeeding. This may make it easier for baby to latch.
- If your baby is not nursing well, express your milk often to maintain milk supply and prevent engorgement.
- If your breasts are uncomfortably full at the end of a feeding or between feedings, express your milk until it's more comfortable. This will help keep your breasts from becoming too full.
Increasing Milk Supply
Each time you breastfeed or pump, you're telling your body to make more milk. If you are struggling with low milk supply, pumping may help you make more milk.
Try pumping between feedings. Aim to remove more milk from your breasts and/or increase the number of times you empty your breasts.
Supplying Milk When You're Away From Your Baby
Being away from your baby—whether you're returning to work or school, need to run errands, or want a night out with friends—requires planning.
Pumping or expressing milk is a great way to make sure your baby gets the benefits of breast milk while you are apart.
- Pump or express breast milk while your baby is napping or when you have help from others to watch your baby. Or try to pump for a few minutes after every feeding. You can store your milk for later.
- If you're back at work or school, try to pump or express milk as often as you would feed your baby. Talk to your employer about scheduling breaks to pump.
- An electric breast pump may be the best way to remove milk quickly when you are away from your baby for several hours.
Other Helpful Tips
Getting Started
- Start early.
Many moms mention that their breasts feel fuller in the morning. This may be a good time to express milk. - Relax. Don't worry if you don't get much milk at first. This is normal. Most moms are able to express more over time.
Staying on Track
- Keep all of your pumping sessions. Skipping sessions may cause your breasts to make less milk. Keeping your sessions will also help prevent engorgement and plugged ducts.
- Check your pump. Talk to your WIC breastfeeding staff if you are not sure if your pump is the right fit or if you think it's not working right.
- Take care of yourself. Get plenty of rest, eat well, drink enough fluid, and let others help you.
- Help your baby adjust to taking breast milk from a bottle. Your baby may be more likely to accept breast milk in a bottle from someone else at first, since baby is used to nursing from your breast.
Saving Time
- Ask for help. Let your partner or family members clean your pump and parts and pack it for your next work or school day.
- Keep extra, clean parts on hand.
How to increase the amount of milk for a nursing mother? - an article in the blog of the medical center Health for Children in Moscow
Breastfeeding is the key to good health and mental peace of the child for years to come. But besides this, breastfeeding solves most of the mother's issues: from financial issues to the convenience of building your day and bonding with your child. Galina Vladimirovna Loseva, our most sought-after pediatrician with more than 20 years of experience, tells how to increase the amount of milk for good nutrition of a child
The problem of lack of milk can occur both in the early neonatal period, when lactation is becoming established, and later, for example, during lactation crises, which can occur at certain periods of time (3-6 weeks, 3-4 months, 6 months), as well as after temporary weaning during the mother’s illness or the need to take certain medications that are incompatible with breastfeeding.
Ways to increase lactation:
- Feeding on demand , especially during early lactation. Frequent feedings in the first weeks of life are essential for maximizing the number of prolactin receptors to ensure sufficient milk production in the long term. Without these receptors, lactation will be at risk by 2-3 months of age. It is advisable to attach the baby to the breast as soon as possible after childbirth. If possible, do not use bottle supplements without a good reason. Night feedings are obligatory, the need for them usually lasts up to about 6 months.
- Proper breastfeeding. The baby must include both the nipple and areola. His mouth should be wide open with his lower lip turned outward
- You can use post-feeding pumping to increase milk production. And at the same time, freeze milk to create a reserve in case the mother leaves or a case of illness in which it is necessary to interrupt breastfeeding.
- Rational nutrition for breastfeeding women.
The menu should contain cereals, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs, fruits, dairy products are better than sour-milk, a small amount of nuts is acceptable. The use of strict hypoallergenic diets in a woman without an allergic history is unacceptable. Spicy dishes, spices, fried foods are excluded, this can affect the taste and smell of milk. - Drinking enough liquid - water, green tea, compotes, fruit drinks. Drinks should preferably be warm or hot. It is recommended to take liquid 20-40 minutes before feeding.
- Eliminate alcohol, nicotine, including passive smoking.
- Compliance with the rest regimen , psycho-emotional peace, positive attitude. This is largely determined by the attitude of close people who can help a nursing mother in household chores, caring for other children, etc.
- Warm shower, light breast massage just before feeding.
- If you still need supplementary feeding, then it is better to give it with a pipette, spoon, syringe without a needle.
- Pharmacy products: Laktogon, Femilak. From herbs, galega, cumin, anise are considered safe. However, relying only on these funds is not worth it if the above points are not observed. They can be used as ancillary, as an addition to the diet of a nursing mother, which may be insufficient for certain reasons.
The material was provided by a pediatrician with more than 20 years of experience Galina Vladimirovna Loseva.
All recommendations should be applied after full-time consultation with a specialist doctor.
Breast milk production | Baby's needs
Did you know that the amount of breast milk adapts to your baby's needs? In this article, you will learn amazing facts about breast milk production in the first days, weeks and months.
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Your body is able to produce breast milk for your baby at every stage of development. Understanding how milk production “turns on”, what happens to milk when you feed your baby, and why production adjusts to his needs as he grows, will help you start this amazing process in the right way.
First day: milk production at birth
The baby is usually ready to breastfeed from birth. When he grabs the breast and begins to suck rhythmically, the milk-producing cells “turn on” and the formation of the first breast milk, colostrum, starts. 1 Try to feed your baby as much as possible in the first hour of his life, and then as soon as he shows interest in feeding. This will help lay the foundation for good milk production later on. 2
First days: the arrival of milk
At this stage, the level of progesterone in your body decreases,
pregnancy hormone, which begins to fall after the placenta is released, and the hormones responsible for milk production, prolactin, insulin and hydrocortisone, are included in the work. These hormones will help start milk production. 3 Approximately on the third day of the baby's life, milk will begin to come in, and you will feel that your breasts are full and become noticeably firmer.
1
First month: shaping milk production
During the first weeks, your body will be especially sensitive to the amount of milk produced as it learns to produce the right amount. Prolactin levels increase dramatically each time you empty your breasts, thereby helping shape the lactation process. It also contributes to the maturation of your milk in terms of composition. At this stage, transitional milk is produced and the amount continues to grow. 3.4
For good long-term milk production, it is very important that you are close to your baby during the first few weeks. The more often you breastfeed, the more milk will be produced. This process resembles the law of supply and demand. Each time after emptying the breast, whether it is feeding the baby or pumping, even more milk will be produced.
Remember that it is normal for newborns to eat frequently, perhaps even every 45 minutes, and this does not mean that they are not getting enough milk.
Frequent feedings help shape milk production, so feed your baby on demand, not on a schedule.
“In the first few weeks you may feel like you don’t have enough milk because your baby will be feeding all the time, but that’s okay,” says UK mom-of-two Jo, “We tend to think that the baby wants to eat every few hours, but that is not necessarily the case."
Don't forget that babies also breastfeed for comfort. Breastfeeding helps them calm down and adjust to their new life outside the womb. In addition, feeding helps to establish a connection between you.
Stable milk production in the first month
If you follow your baby's needs and feed him as often and for as long as he wants, milk production should adjust. 5
Some mothers try to increase the period between feedings so that the breasts can produce more milk during this time, but this should not be done, as this may have the opposite effect. 2
If you are unable to breastfeed directly for the first two weeks, express your milk to build and maintain your milk supply during this critical period and beyond.
Did you know that feeding your baby extra formula unnecessarily can reduce your milk production? The chest will not receive a signal to increase production, because it will not be emptied. In addition, if the baby sleeps longer after formula, he may miss his usual next feeding time.
This is a kind of “supplementing trap”. After three to four days of formula supplementation, during which the breasts have emptied less, the body will receive a signal that breastfeeding has stopped, and the amount of milk produced will begin to decrease. As a result, the baby will remain hungry and will need additional formula supplementation. And so on in a circle ... As a result, this will lead to really low milk production, and the baby will eat mainly the mixture.
Breast milk production after six weeks
After a month of breastfeeding, post-feeding bursts of prolactin secretion begin to decrease, milk matures, and the body gets used to producing as much milk as your baby needs.
In fact, the chest begins to work "on autopilot." 4 You may also notice at this time that your breasts are softer and your milk flow has stopped.
At this stage, women often have fears of "losing milk".
However, this only means that milk production has been established and now fully meets the needs of the child. It is noteworthy that although the baby continues to grow, he will consume approximately the same amount of milk both at six weeks and at six months. You may notice that the baby began to suckle the breast longer, but less often. On some days he may eat a little less than usual - his appetite changes in the same way as an adult.
Now your body will produce exactly the amount of milk,
as much as your baby needs. Therefore, the more milk the baby drinks (or you express), the more milk will be produced.
How does this happen? The reason for this is thought to be the so-called "feedback lactation inhibitor" that controls milk production.
The more milk in the breast, 2 the higher the inhibitor level, so a full breast produces less milk than one that has been emptied.
What is the milk production rate?
Mothers often worry about their milk supply and think about how to increase it. However, if the baby is healthy and growing well, problems usually do not arise.
“I was worried that my newborn daughter was not getting enough milk as she was feeding very quickly and always from one breast even though I offered both,” says Marjorie, mother of two in the UK, “But when I pumped from using a breast pump, I was surprised at how much milk I produced, and calmed down. I just had to keep feeding her little and often.”
Keep in mind, however, that not all mothers are able to express a lot of milk right away. You can also try hand expressing milk and see if there is a change in breast fullness.
If you're worried about your milk supply, read our tips for symptoms of too little or too much milk.
Literature
1 Pang WW, Hartmann PE. Initiation of human lactation: secretory differentiation and secretory activation. J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia 2007;12(4):211-221. - Pang, W.W., Hartmann, P.I., "Lactation initiation in the lactating mother: secretory differentiation and secretory activation." G Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia. 2007;12(4):211-221.
2 Kent JC et al. Principles for maintaining or increasing breast milk production. J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs . 2012;41(1):114-121. - Kent J.S. et al., "Principles for Maintaining and Increasing Milk Production". G Obstet Ginecol Neoneutal Nurs. 2012;41(1):114-121.
3 Ostrom KM. A review of the hormone prolactin during lactation. Prog Food Nutr Sci .
