Breastfeeding

[Shanu12]

My baby's age one month still struggling breastfeeding milk supply if I am pump my breast within 30 minutes i am getting one tea spoon!!!?? What I should do right now please suggest me .

[Hidden]

Pumping is not the most efficient way to extract breast milk and is not an indicator of how much baby is getting when you breastfeed. To get more you need to pump at the same time every day, if you’re not breastfeeding directly you need to pump every two hours to keep your supply up. Before pumping take a hot shower or apply hot flannels to your breasts, gently massage all around you breast until milk starts dripping out of your nipple, then start expressing. Different people swear by different remedies, I think fennel tea, some types of beer and all sorts of other supplements. But the body is designed to respond on a supply and demand basis, so the more baby or you demand the more it will supply.

I didn’t get on with expressing, so when my nipples were sore and bleeding because my daughter had an undiagnosed tongue tie my milk supply went right down. Once we’d got it cut, at 6 weeks old, I spent a week sitting on my sofa breast feeding her as regularly as she would take it. We got to eight weeks and I was ready to give up as it all just felt too hard and I was still sore, so I decided to breast feed her until it started hurting and then give her a bottle of formula. Taking the pressure away, breastfeeding started working and stopped hurting.

With my second child (also tongue tied) it took 16 weeks before I found a comfortable positive to feed him in, I ended up feeding off just the right breast (due to damaged left nipple) and had no issues with supply.

Both journeys I spent a lot of time talking to “experts”, reading books about breastfeeding and online articles, websites. It is an amazing experience when it works, but the support is lacking unless you know where to look and it can be really tough in the early days, which 4 weeks in is really early. Take care, be gentle with yourself and remember you are doing the best you can do for your little one. X

[Ribena1987]

Best way to establish supply is to put baby to boob and feed your baby on a supply and demand basis. Once you establish a feeding routine your boobs will adjust and know how milk to produce. Baby’s suction is much stronger than a pump. The best thing to do is to seek support to get you through these tough moments. Speak to health visitors at your local clinic, go to infant feeding cafes at your local hospital, join NCT group and speak to one of their breastfeeding experts, go to breastfeeding baby groups. Don’t give up you are doing so well. It gets easier as time goes on x

[roxannacar]

How often are you breastfeeding? Is baby also using formula? Are you breastfeeding or.pumping at night?

The good news you are still producing milk ... however as mentioned before you need to be pumping/feeding every 2-3 hours to bring up your supply. It's a demand and supply thing the more you pump/feed the more you produce.

Are you sure you are using the pump correctly? I found pumps weren't very suited to me and I could hand Express more than with a pump.

[Yeek]

I pump and latch also, I find that if I wait until the flow in the pump has stopped then I express by hand until that stops too. You can do this by cupping your breast in your hand just underneath the nipple then move your thumb down your breast towards your nipple, make a movement like your extracting the milk from the higher part of your breast with your thumb, a tiny bit of lanolin helps on the thumb so the skin on the breast doesn't get irritated.

My supply has risen by quite a lot, I'm almost 5 months in to pumping and my supply is still going quite strong 🙂