45 Replies
Nurse often. Room in with your baby, and learn to recognize his feeding cues (such as wriggling around, rapid eye movements, putting his hands in his mouth). Try not to wait until he is crying before you offer the breast. When he is crying and upset, he is less likely to be willing to settle down and nurse, and may respond by shutting down and falling asleep. Crying is a late feeding cue, so learn to recognize the early ones. Click here to see feeding cues. Newborns usually need to nurse 10-12 times or more in 24 hours. The more they nurse, the sooner your milk will come in, and the more milk your body will produce. Make sure that you offer the breast at least every two to three hours during the day, with no more than one four hour stretch during the night. Since newborns tend to be sleepy, you may have to wake him up for feedings. If you are separated from your baby after birth, or if he doesn’t nurse well, use a hospital or professional grade pump to stimulate and maintain your milk supply. Home remedies such as the popular papaya and fish bone soup is good for boosting supply. And most importantly drink water often as breastmilk is made of largely water hence to produce more milk you need lotsa water!
What makes you think you're not producing enough milk? If it's because baby is crying and keep wanting to latch, that's a good thing coz that's the way your supply will increase. Just keep latching. It'll be tiring at first but once the supply increases because of all that latching, you'll have a much easier time. If you're judging your supply based on how much you're pumping out, please don't. What a pump can extract and what a baby can suck out is very different. Babies are much more efficient. Pumping quantity is not a good gauge of actual amount being produced. Whatever you do, don't give formula if your baby is already producing the required number of wet diapers. Baby will be full of fm and will want to latch less which then causes your supply to drop. You'll fall into the formula milk trap which is a vicious cycle.
for sm mummies it will take a bit more time for milk to kick in. what u can do now is continue to latch on demand. bb's suckling will help to send msg 2 ur body to make more milk. meanwhile if ur bb still appears hungry after latchin u can top up wif a bit of fm to tide him/her through. for me, i had to top up about 10 to 15ml of fm once every 24hrs - always in e middle of e nite. i did dis for about 2 to 3 nites. then milk came in for good and i stopped giving fm alrdy. wad i did was to latch on demand. den day time i will pump for 10mins every 2 to 3 hrs. nite time i will pump for 10mins every 3 to 4hrs. did dis for 2 to 3 nites and that was the end of pumping. do drink plenty of water. stay calm n latch on. u will do fine mummy! jiayou!!!
To be honest with you, my milk only kicked in day 4 and that was 20ml. But bcoz my baby had low blood, in the hospital, she was given FM. But i had lots of determination and most importantly, my husband was next to me, supporting me. He gave me time to latch my baby then while I continue with my power pump, he'll take my baby away to put her to sleep. So she sleeps a lot. I ate mother's love, fenugreek, lots of water (3ml least), spinach soup, red dates longan drink, papaya and fish bone soup. It helped. I'm total breastfeeding until now that baby is turning 11 months. It helps, try it! Good luck Mummy! :)
I have no first hand experience ( am expecting my frst one). But what my mum, friends and sister is law swear by is fenugreek. Available indian stores easily. U can add to to ur cooking. Or even can take fenugreek capsules. Im adding a link about dos and dont about fenugreek. http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastfeed/herbs/fenugreek/ And above all plz dont stress ( easier said than done) Stress just adds to the problem. Sit in a quiet room listening to some soothing music when u feed the baby. ( again no first hand experience, am quoting stuff i have read) PS: fenugreek is bitter. Capsules are preferred by many.
Some people will get their milk to come in late. Continue latching and add in power pumps at least once per day. Make sure to drink enough fluids and stay stress free. If you are exclusive pumping, pump every 2-3 hours. Do not miss any pump session even during midnight. Night time is the best time to increase your supply. You can choose papaya with fish soup. It helped me a lot during the initial stage of breastfeeding. I drink it twice per day. You can try to find your boosters by try and error. Oat is also a good booster.
mum's always wants to give what's the best for her baby so am I,dear mummy don't worry breastmilk won't come in so early but you still can breastfeed your baby it's just you have to feed frequent my breastmilk came in quite late like almost 10days after birth you can try to take Oat and have breast massage by prenatal therapist they are good in this you can look for nik@nik bodyworks to clear your block duct at the same time get your baby to suck so can stimulate more ducts to open,I hope my info will help you,god bless you
I just want to add that baby usually has a growth spurt between 2nd to third week. And they feed constantly! Pls do persevere in latching on. They feed more and latch on more often and that will help you increase your supply. It will be a tough 3-5 days. Mine lasted 5 days and he was feeding at 1.5 hr intervals, 45 min each time. So I only had 45 min breaks in between. And this was pretty much throughout the day. But after those gruelling few days, my supply was super awesome!
Unli latch lang daw ang solusyon dyan. I've been there and my baby is just one month back then. I don't have enough milk even when we are doing unli latch the whole days its just wasn't enough for him. It was a very stressful cycle for me. We need to do that over and over everyday but still, my son weren't satisfied to the milk my body is producing. So i wean the battle and gave up. Na stress din ako for not having enough milk kaya lalong hindi nagproduce body ko. :(
Is she your child? I heard that first time mothers tend to have milk come in later than mothers with more than one child. My milk only came in a week later. My confinement lady prepared papaya fish soups for me. It really helps in my milk supply. Also try to eat more and have lots of rest. My colleagues taking feekgure pills from GNC. They said it helps them. Let the baby latch, latch and latch. It also helps in simulating milk supply