Breastfeeding // How I Increased My Milk Supply

Somehow during my insanely long labor (probably during the pushing phase) I lost a greater than average amount of blood.  It’s a bit of a mystery how or when this happened as there wasn’t any obvious hemorrhaging or anything, nonetheless, it happened.  As a result my blood pressure was super low, my pulse was incredibly high and I was very pale.  In fact the next morning my dad kept saying that I looked like I was part of the Cullen family.  That’s right, my Dad referenced Twilight.  Moving on.

Now apart from not being able to stand up and hearing the sound of rain every time I tried, I wasn’t all that affected by the blood lose, but since being able to be upright and conscious is really helpful when you have a newborn my Midwives gave me two blood transfusions.  After the first two transfusions they were still concerned with my blood pressure and thought I could have a third but since my symptoms were gone they felt the risk outweighed the benefits.  While all this was happening I was pretty delirious since I had literally not slept for 4 nights but I remember them mentioning that  the blood loss my delay my milk coming.

Well, delay it, it did.

When Asher had his first pediatrician’s appointment at 3 days old, he was already becoming dehydrated and lethargic, so she put him on a strict feeding schedule (of every two hours from start of feeding to start of feeding) and told me we needed to supplement with formula and that I needed to pump after I nursed to stimulate my milk to come in.

So it looked something like this:

Nurse on left breast: 20 minutes

Nurse on right breast: 20 minutes

Prepare and give Asher a bottle: 10-15 minutes

Pump: 20 minutes

This gave me approximately 45 minutes to sleep, before I had to wake Asher up to repeat the whole process all over again.  Needless to say, we were both exhausted.  The poor guy would be too tired to nurse, so I’d have to strip him down and place cold objects on his tummy and feet to keep him awake long enough to eat.  I don’t have to tell you that this was awful.  I was a basket case.  Luckily by the time he was 1 week old he had regained and surpassed his birth weight and my milk had come in so we received the all clear to feed on demand and he immediately started sleeping 4 hours straight at night, which felt like 10 hours to me.

For the next few weeks things were going really well milk supply wise.  We stopped supplementing with formula and I was able to exclusively breastfeed, which was a huge relief for me.  Then my mother in-law came to stay with us and very sweetly infused all my drinking water with mint, which I LOVED while I was pregnant, however for some reason I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore (which should have set off a flag in my mind).  I started to notice that my milk supply was decreasing and Asher was hungry ALL the time.  I couldn’t understand it, because nothing had changed in my diet or habits, other then the mint water.  So I did some research and discovered that peppermint and mint in large quantities will actually reduce your milk supply and are used by a lot of women when they are weaning their babies to help with engorgement.  So what did I do?  Well, I pumped.  A lot.

Milk production is all about supply and demand.  The more you nurse and pump the more signals will be sent that your breasts need to produce more milk.  It’s really quite simple.  I pumped for 10 minutes after every single time I breastfed.  This was especially hard during the middle of night feedings, but it was only 10 minutes so I forced myself to be disciplined about it AND I had thrush (more on that later).  If I could do it, so can you!  Very quickly I began noticing that my supply was increasing.  I allowed Asher to nurse for as long as he wanted to, to use my breasts as a pacifier and to fall asleep nursing.  Those 3 choices also helped increase my supply.  The key is to empty your breasts and then to continue to stimulate them for 10 minutes longer.  Babies are far better at stimulating your breasts than even the highest quality pump, so keep that in mind.

I also did 3 other things to help support my milk supply:

1.  I drank a TON of water.  I have a 20 ounce water bottle and I would drink a whole bottle or more every time I breastfed.

2.  I ate a lot.  This was hard, because all the water drinking was curbing my appetite, but I just had to stay on top of it.  The milk production cookies that my midwives recommended were a huge help in this regard.

3.  I took a lot of Fenugreek.  I was taking 4 pills, 3 times a day.  I reeked of maple syrup, but hey there are worse things to smell like.

I’m happy to report, after much hard work and effort we are exclusively breastfeeding and Asher is gaining weight like a champ!

So that’s what I did and that’s what worked for me.  If you’re having milk supply issues I recommend trying these steps but if they don’t work for you, leave me a comment or send me an email and we can trouble shoot together.

Happy nursing!