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Hawaii Babies
How to increase supply?!?!
Up until this week I had several days of milk stored and now I barely can keep up with his demand. Until a few days ago I only pumped 2 x a day and only nursed him 2-3 x a day and the rest of the time he ate a bottle of pumped milk and only doing that I was albe to store some. This week I have not been able to keep with his demand doing what i had been doing..even had to give him some formula b/c he was just irrate from being hungary. The last 3 days i have been pumping every 3 hrs and trying to nurse more and only give bottles overnight, but I still barely have enough. BF Mamas what do you do or what has helped you?
I hope this makes since b/c i was typing with a screaming baby in my arms:(
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Re: How to increase supply?!?!
are you pumping every single time he gets a bottle? if not then you need to make sure you do that to keep up w/him. if you are only pumping/nursing only 4-5x a day then that may be the issue. also remember that the pump is no where near as efficient as a baby - so pumping every 3 hrs is not as good as nursing every 3 hrs w/him. also, he may just be going through a growth spurt right now (they go through one around 6 wks) and you'll just have to nurse around the clock w/him...they can be fussy when they are going through a growth spurt and you could be misinterpreting it as hunger? (it is possible to overfeed with formula vs not so much with BFing)
i would check out this link here from kellymom
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
My Food Blog - Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats
and yep, I would try to nurse/pump more. I couldn't quite follow - you are giving bottles so that you can sleep overnight? you might want to try to nurse or pump in that time period becuase I have heard that really makes a difference.
We didn't use bottles and I didn't pump regularly until he was 3 months old so I don't have much experience with quantity he was eating/I was producing.
Kellymom is a great resource.
This is what I did to increase my drastically reduced milk supply:
- started taking Domparidone
- took fenugreek
- ate oatmeal for breakfast
- drank TONS of water and made sure I was eating good fats
- for two weeks I pumped after every time Elyse fed to stimulate my body to make more milk. I alsy did a pumping session at 8:30, which wasn't a normal feeding time to build up a freezer stash.
The pumping was a huge commitment, but it really made a difference.
There are some different things you can do with pumping. The La Leche League has a great website too. I found a local representative who was a fantastic resource for me. She also told me that it's normal for your milk supply to dip down at about 10-13 weeks.
Good luck.
Married Bio
As you know, BFing didn't work out for me - but I have a LOT of experience with trying to increase supply, lol! The things that worked best for me were drinking TONS of water and making sure I was eating enough, pumping a lot in addition to nursing, and eventually taking domparidone (this is only useful if you still nurse and pump a lot - basically it triggers the same hormone that you get when your milk initially comes in, so it gives you a second jumpstart but isn't a magic pill).