Increasing Your Breastmilk Production
This is a list I've compiled from my own experiences and from email from other breastfeeding moms over the past 2-3 years. If you have other suggestions to offer for increasing milk production and/or pumping yield, please email me. Also, see this comprehensive site dedicated to helping mothers increase their milk supply, owned by Diana West, IBCLC, for more information if you are having trouble with supply.
A very basic concept that must be understood in order to approach a supply problem is this: milk production is a delicate balance of demand and supply. This distinction between supply and demand versus demand and supply is an important one to note. Milk production (supply) is DRIVEN by demand - from the baby or from a pump. If the milk producing glands are not stimulated by breastfeeding and/or pumping often enough throughout the day and night, they do not get the "signal" that milk is being demanded so that milk should be produced accordingly. Please keep that concept in mind as you read the following tips and try to incorporate as many milk gland stimulating activities into your daily life as possible.
- NUMBER ONE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO BOOST YOUR MILK SUPPLY: Nurse every chance you get while you're together, day and night. Don't be afraid to offer the breast, even if the baby doesn't initiate it.
- Make sure you're getting plenty of calories, fluids and rest. You simply cannot make enough milk without these three things.
- If you're not already doing it, sleep with your baby. If baby smells breastmilk during the night, he'll be more likely to wake up and nurse. Most nursing moms get to the point eventually that they can get baby started nursing without really waking up completely so Mom isn't totally exhausted all day. If your partner objects to having baby in your bed or you don't feel comfortable having her there, please consider finding some other arrangement that will keep baby near you during the night. See this article to find out about sidecar arrangements or other things other families have found that worked. Please read the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine's information on co-sleeping (PDF), especially the section on recommendations for making co-sleeping safe for the baby.
- Nurse baby the last thing in the morning and the first thing in the afternoon, and allow him free access to the breast at home in the evenings and days off.
- Don't use pacifiers/dummies/other artificial suck objects. If baby's sucking instinct is satisfied that way, he won't be as inclined to nurse for comfort (which provides extra stimulation for milk production). You may hear disparaging remarks about your baby using you as a "human pacifier", but that is very wrong-headed thinking. What is the purpose of plastic pacifiers? They were made to be used by babies (and parents) to substitute for the human nipple - NOT the other way around! Your baby has a natural instinct to suckle... let her do that on the "real thing" as much as possible, not on a plastic substitute.
- Let the housework and laundry go as much as you can so you can nurse, nurse, nurse.
- Make sure you have a hospital-grade pump. It may seem expensive to buy or rent one, but it's cheaper than the $1800-$2000 you'll spend on artificial baby milk in ONE YEAR if you don't breastfeed!
- Double pump.
- Pump after feeding at home when you can manage it.
- Pump more often at work. If you can't get away to nurse baby on your lunch hour, add another pumping session. Three pumping sessions or two pumping sessions and nursing baby at midday are generally recommended at a minimum.
- Relax... while you're pumping and any other time you get the chance!
- Spend a weekend relactating (do nothing but nurse, sleep and be waited on by your family or friends).
- Make an audio or video recording of baby cooing, crying, whatever special noise he/she makes. Play the recording while you're pumping.
- Take a towel, blanket or item of clothing that smells like baby to work with you.
- Put warm compresses or paper towels on your breasts right before pumping.
- Manually massage your breasts to encourage letdown.
- Pump in a warm, clean, private location.
- Pump one side while baby suckles on the other. Be aware, though, that this requires some level of coordination which some women are not able to manage. It works better in the early months, before the baby knows what that pump noise is, where the on/off switch is and how to pull the tubes out of the bottles. :)