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Old April 2nd 04, 03:02 PM
Karen
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Default Question: regaining lost milk supply?

I'm afraid it sounds like you have fallen prey to the first time mother "I'm
not making enough milk, must supplement" syndrome. But that is pretty easy
to fix, particularly since your baby is so young. Like the ladies here have
said, you need to stop supplementing, dropping the formula feeding by an
ounce per day. Do not read into the reactions the baby has to the bottle-
like ravenous sucking, etc. I know with my first two kids, I had to just
stop myself from attaching motivation to their actions - oh, he's spitting
out the nipple, he's pushing me away, he doesn't want to nurse, he'd rather
have a bottle...oh, he's screaming, he's starving, oh, he just gulped down
that formula - he must love that more than my milk....You need to be firm
and rational about breastfeeding. Diaper output and weight gain should be
your big cue here about the baby's status.

I can remember having just one baby and thinking he took up all my time, but
honestly, you will look back and wonder what on earth kept you so busy (when
you have two or three or four...one small baby will be the least of
it...it'll still be about #1, who's always doing something new!). You must
take care of yourself. Leave out sport bottles of ice water and drink them
all day. At one point, to increase my production, I drank over a gallon of
water (may have been flavored with Crystal Light) per day. I also think
Fenugreek works well. Buy easy things to eat for yourself - containers of
yogurt or cottage cheese, single serving meals, even microwave lunches -
things you can grab that take little preparation. Wear the baby in a Baby
Bjorn/sling so you can get things done. I assume a 5 week old sleeps at
least a few hours during the day - use that time to take care of yourself
(I'm assuming you are home - even if you work, you'd still be on maternity
leave?).

I recently had a production problem precipitated by bad colds for both my
5.5 month old and me - between the cold medicine for me and his lack of
interest, it was very bad. I was very worried because my breasts also felt
slack. Lots of water and fenugreek plus constant nursing/pumping made
things better. I nursed and then used an Isis to keep sending the message
that more was needed - and with an exclusively BF 5.5 month old, that's a
lot. I also got up in the night to pump. It's a supply and demand issue -
you need to get the message to your body that it needs to up it's output.
Bottles of formula kill the whole feedback system.

Good luck. It's hard, I know, but you can turn this around!

Karen