Increase Your Breast Milk
1. How do I increase my breast milk?
There are many tips of increasing your breast milk:
- Frequent breast feeding or breast pumping at least 8 to 12 times/day.
- Ensure that the baby is latching on to the breast properly. Your baby should not be sucking the nipples only but latching on to the whole areola instead.
- Offer both breasts at each feeding. Start off with one breast first, as the baby’s sucking becomes slow or tries to doze off to sleep, offer the other breast. This will also ensure that your baby has enough supply of foremilk and hindmilk.
- Using breast compression.
- Ensure that you are drinking enough water.
- Eat nutritional food and a balanced diet.
- Relax and stress could reduce your production of breast milk.
- Even though beer or caffeine may increase your breast milk often it will be excreted into your breast milk and affecting your baby or the taste of the milk.
2. Are there any medications or herbs that I could take to increase my breast milk?
Unfortunately, there are not many researches done on these herb and medications. However, some mothers swear by it. You should only resort to this after you have tried the simple strategies mentioned above.
Herbs:
- Fenugreek capsules. Typically the breast milk increases within 72 hours. However, this is not suitable for mothers with diabetes or asthma. Side effects include profuse sweating and maple syrup secretions.
- Blessed thistle
- Herbal tea
- Taking oatmeal
Medications:
- Domperidone (motilium). This is perhaps the better option with fewer side effects. Dosage 20 mg four times/day
- Maxalon (metoclopromide). This is usually less used as it has more side effects on the mother e.g headache and fatigue. Those with history of depression should not use it. Dosage 10mg tds for 1 – 2 weeks then reduce to 10mg daily.
REFERENCES:
1. Melissa Kotlen Nagin. About.com. Relactation and how to increase your milk supply
