Some experts suggest pumping both breasts with a hospital-grade electric breast pump every three hours, beginning about two months before you hope to begin breast-feeding. You can also manually stimulate the breasts and nipples this is where partner participation may come in handy.
Breast stimulation can encourage the production and release of prolactin. A qualified lactation consultant may provide you with specific techniques for stimulation and hormone therapy.
You could also contact a local hospital or clinic to see if they have lactation consultants on staff, or visit your primary health care provider for a consultation. While breastfeeding is a natural process, and one that many women find fulfilling, there are some potential drawbacks. As breasts begin to produce milk, they become larger, heavier, and more tender. Some women find this engorgement painful or uncomfortable.
Breastfeeding women can also cause plugged ducts, when a milk duct does not drain properly and becomes inflamed, causing a tender lump in the breast. This lactation consultant watched me breastfeed, then weighed the baby no change , and then introduced me to the workings of a breast pump. At this point, I was still expected — and expecting — to sustain him with breastmilk once it came in.
This method might take over an hour, and the baby would need to eat every two hours. Where was my milk? I kept picturing a ship, trying to dock. The H. Where Is My Milk. Who could tell me? Of course, the internet stepped into the breach. The rest, it seems, are just not trying hard enough. After five days of spending half my time in some form of baby feeding, the lactation consultant came back. At this point, I was a mess.
She watched me breastfeed again and then she watched me pump. Oh, and no more handfeeding. We no longer cared about nipple confusion. I was sad. But as I dove back into the internet, I started to feel angry.
In all of the hundreds of blog posts and bulletin boards and WebMD-style stories that I read, no one had ever mentioned anything about glandular tissue.
Insufficient glandular tissue IGT — or hypoplasia of the mammary gland — is a condition where the mammary tissue of the breast is supplanted by fatty tissue. The look of IGT boobs is distinctive: tubelike, often wide-set, asymmetrical, and with large areolas. It is better to pump more often, for shorter periods, than less often for longer periods. Start out slowly, pumping only for 5—10 minutes on low suction to begin with.
Gradually increase the length of each expressing session up to about 15—20 minutes. Using an electric pump with a double kit is best. This takes milk from both breasts at once. Not only does it save you time, but pumping both breasts at once results in higher prolactin levels, more let-downs and milk with a higher energy content than pumping one breast at a time.
Make sure that your pump is working well and is suited to long-term use. Some of the smaller pumps, like those that take batteries or that only allow you to pump one breast at a time, are not designed for constant use and may lose their suction with time and just not work properly. The ABA booklet Breastfeeding : expressing and storing breastmilk has information about expressing, handling, storing and cleaning procedures. The website article Expressing and storing breastmilk contains helpful information too.
Some women use hand expressing only to build their milk supply. If you have been only pumping and find that your milk supply is not increasing, try doing some hand expressing after pumping or between pumping times.
This may help to encourage your breasts to increase the amount of milk they make. The emptier the breasts, the stronger the message they get to make more milk. Hand expressing is a very useful skill that takes practice to master. This is covered in detail in the booklet Breastfeeding : expressing and storing breastmilk. You can watch videos of hand expressing. Combining hand expression with breast massage can help to get the milk to flow. Massage first, then express.
Massage again, and then repeat the hand expressing and so on. To massage your breasts, work evenly around your entire breast, stroking gently downward toward your areola.
Frequent breastfeeding is the most important aid to building a milk supply. Prior breastfeeding experience. Mothers who have breastfed prior babies tend to produce more milk Auerbach, The shorter the amount of time since a mother last breastfed, the more milk she is likely to produce WHO, In addition to the physiological advantage, a mother with previous breastfeeding experience has confidence in her ability to breastfeed.
She has knowledge and resources accrued from her previous breastfeeding experiences that provide a foundation for breastfeeding success. Breastfeeding culture. Research has shown that mothers from developing countries, where breastfeeding is often the cultural norm, produce more milk. These mothers have the support of their community. They are confident in their ability to breastfeed, because they grew up in an environment where breastfeeding was just a normal part of life.
They saw their mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and friends all publicly breastfeeding as part of the daily routine of caring for a baby. Mothers from these countries are more likely to parent in ways that support breastfeeding. They are also less likely to have alternatives, such as bottles and infant formula, readily available. Despite the lack of availability of breast pumps and medications to enhance milk production, these mothers still tend to make more milk than mothers in developed countries Gribble, See Chapter 2 , A Community of Support, for more information.
In general, a mother who is healthy will produce more milk. Some key ingredients for generous milk production are:. Parenting practices.
How you parent can influence the physiological process of lactation. Using any of the parenting tools for latching and attaching introduced in Chapter 6 , such as babywearing, co-sleeping, or co-bathing, boosts levels of oxytocin, an essential hormone for lactation, since oxytocin increases whenever mother and baby are in close bodily contact.
Furthermore, using any of these approaches often leads to more frequent breastfeeding, a key to good milk production. Frequency and effectiveness of breast stimulation and milk removal. The primary and most effective type of breast stimulation and milk removal is a baby who is breastfeeding often and breastfeeding well. For mothers who are supplementing breastfeeding with expressed milk or formula, the use of an at-breast supplementer versus a bottle or other supplemental feeding method can increase both the quality and quantity of suckling from the breast Genna, More information regarding at-breast supplementers is provided in Chapter Breast stimulation and milk removal can also happen using a breast pump, with hand expression, or by a partner suckling.
Chapter 11 , Physical Techniques for Inducing Lactation, describes each of these milk-making techniques in detail. Use of galactogogues. Galactogogues can be herbal or pharmaceutical medications, or foods reputed to increase milk production. Taking galactogogues may increase your milk production, and the pharmaceutical medication domperidone has been shown to be the most effective of the galactogogues. If you have run the gamut of fertility treatments, you may find the idea of using medications to induce lactation is nothing compared to the heavy-duty hormones that you took during fertility treatments, or you may feel that you are through with taking medications.
See Chapter 12 , Medications for Inducing Lactation, for more information on using galactogogues. In most cases, it takes at least a month to prepare the breasts before they can make milk.
With continued breast stimulation and milk removal, the amount of milk produced will increase from droplets to sprays. How long it takes is not an indication of how well it will work eventually Starr, In one case report, an adoptive mother began inducing lactation when her baby was 10 days old.
No noticeable milk was produced until the baby was four months old. Within a week, the mother was making enough milk to exclusively breastfeed her baby Cheales-Siebenaler, Human milk contains over components especially designed to meet the needs of infants.
Read part 2: Breastfeeding Without Birthing: Hormones. Abul-Fadl, A. Breastfeeding Medicine, 7 3 , — Auerbach, K. Induced Lactation. American Journal of Diseases of Children , 4 ,
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