Milk Supply Is down - HELP! My Daughter Is Only 6 Mo.

You might try a herbal supplement called Mother's Milk Plus. It contains fenugreek which is supposed to help boost milk production. Good luck!

J.,

I went through something VERY similar.

First, go easy on yourself!! You are doing a great job and all of the breastmilk you've given your daughter thus far is wonderful! When I was going through a dwindling supply, someone told me to not be so h*** o* myself and I didn't understand it at the time. I know now that it's a **ton** of pressure to want your body to perform in a certain way and seeing little results. It can be extremely frustrating.

I want you to know that it IS possible to get your milk supply back up!! Your body is adjusting to feeding less. Just like when your milk came in at the beginning, your body is sensing that your milk isn't being needed as often now. If you start pumping again (or breastfeeding) with greater frequency, your body will adjust again.

To increase your supply, it will take a very big commitment on your part to pump/feed a lot more than you're doing now. Check the LLL web site and also your birthing hospital for a lactation consultant. If I remember correctly, the LLL recommends pumping every 1-2 hours for 1-2 weeks until your supply increases. I also drank Mother's Milk tea, drank a lot of water, etc. They also tell you to get a fair amount of rest but if you're pumping every 2 hours, it gets a little tricky!

It sounds doable (and it is) but try to be realistic and gentle with yourself. After not doing it that often for a while, going back to that kind of rigorous schedule can be a bit grueling. You absolutely CAN do it if you want to but even if you don't, know that you're still an amazing mom!!!!!

Our pediaitrician told us that because breastmilk doesn't have *all* of the nutrients a baby needs, formula and breastmilk together can actually give your baby every nutrient and all of the wonderful antibodies. If you are able to give her even a small amount of breastmilk a day with her formula, you'll be giving her the best of both. If you are only able to give her formula due to a dwindling milk supply, please give yourself a pat on the back for coming as far as you have! Plenty of very healthy babies are formula-fed and have no problem whatsoever.

Best of luck to you!! You're doing great!

E.

If you haven't been pumping regularly, a pumping session is a lousy indicator of how much milk you're producing. As your body gets used to the pump you might be able to pump more... or you might just not be a good pump producer. Or you might need a better pump. Even when I was exclusively nursing, a pumping session for me would sometimes get only an ounce or two of milk... and my son was definitely not having any shortage of milk.

Although it *can,* it does not *necessarily* indicate that you DO have a supply problem. If you really think your supply is low, the best way to increase your supply is to let your baby do it for you. If you can, spend a couple of days at home, just letting her nurse as often & as long as she wants to.

Your body can make the transition. I nursed my DS1 'til he was two. There will be periods of adjustment... just do a 'nurse-in' whenever your supply needs a boost. You may not even need fenugreek or those teas or anything especially if your supply has been fine up until now.

Best of luck!

Hi J.,
The best thing to do is take out the formula from her diet & get her on the boob. Also you can get a mothers milk tincture & tea from Whole foods, SUnflower, etc. Your baby is the most efficient way of reintroducing your milk supply. Take care, G.

I asked my La Leche League league leader about how to keep supply up and they suggested taking fenugreek & blessed thistle (both available at Vitamin Cottage). My husband looked up possible side effects of the supplements and the worst he found was that the fenugreek can make your urine smell like maple syrup. I have been taking both supplements 1-2 times a day and pumping every 2-3 hours or so for about 10 minutes and my supply has markedly increased. The Mother's Milk tea that others are mentioning was another LLL suggestion. I didn't care for the taste of the tea, but it probably wouldn't hurt to give it a try if you want to. Best of luck. Hope that you find a strategy that works.

Get Mother's Milk herbal tea, made by Traditional Medicinals. You can get it at whole foods and probably other stores too, but not sure which. It really helps.
Good luck.

PLEASE do not let breastfeeding become a HUGE issue! Babies love their mommies and we love our babies, booby time is a benefit that some women don't even get to experience because they can't get their baby to latch, or they don't produce or whatever. You have already gone 6 months and that is more than most do at all. I have always been a bit sad when each of my kids stopped nursing, but that is natural. Just go with the flow, believe me, I have three and they each had their own time that they just started to wean. One was 11 months, one was four months, and one is almost a year and shows no sign of stopping. My kids are all smart, all healthy, all fun, and all a blessing and none of it had anything to do with breastfeeding. Move on and enjoy. As they say, "Don't sweat the small stuff." Consider yourself lucky that you got to enjoy the miracle of breastfeeding in the first place. BTW - hydration is not the main factor in milk production, there are many factors; nutrition, stress, timing, etc. Always, remember, babies have a keen sense and they can tell when mommy is worked up. (I always hated when people told me that but it is true.)

Nice job. I agree with the other Moms who say let it go. It is what it is. None of the tinctures, Mother Love products, water, diet, etc etc etc helped me when my milk supply went south, so don't get the impression that these will be the golden solution. Nice work on the sleep schedule--keep her on it!

Hi J.,

This happened to me when my son turned around 4 months. I spoke with a lactation consultant and my doctor and they both said it can be very common to start to not quite have enough milk at the 4-6 month range, and the lactation consultant said that sleeping through the night does create part of the problem. Here's the scoop.

Most likely, unless you're really prepared to spend a lot of energy keeping your milk supply up, you'll probably end up continuing to be on the low side. This is natural in a way because at 6 months babies start eating solid food for a reason -- your milk isn't meant to continue to be their sole source of nourishment forever, it more starts to move from sole source to supplemental source over the course of the next 6 months. The one thing that may make you feel better is that just because your supply decreases (and by the way, it may be that your supply is exactly the same but her demand is up) -- that doesn't mean your breastfeeding days are over. In fact, when people are still breastfeeding at 2 years they generally don't have much supply, according to the lactation consultant typically it's more like comfort feedings at that point rather than milk that provides a lot of the daily nutrition. So, while I also panicked that this was the beginning of the end when I started to supplement, I've been supplementing with formula and cereal for about 6 weeks now and the breast feeding is still going ducky.

What I did, in consultation with the lacation consultant, was essentially breastfeed my son when he was hungry, and if I could tell he was still hungry afterwards (pulling on the boob, crying) give him a supplemental smaller bottle so he wasn't hungry. This way, every feeding he drained all my milk, but he also wasn't starving (he'd started to lose weight). He goes to bed at 7:30 so I also pump at around 10pm and pump out whatever is left over after the first thing in the morning feed (I have enough milk in the morning he can't drink it all, but by afternoon I'm pretty dry). These two daily pumpings give me about 8 ounces, which I then spread out as needed to supplement during the day (usually in the late afternoon or early evening). If he seems satisfied after he breastfeeds (this is usually the case till early afternoon, but not always) then I won't give him anything but the boob. However, if he seems hungry after breastfeeding and I'm out of milk, I supplement with formula or cereal (note that my doc said that you don't want to do too much cereal since it's not too nutritionally complete -- you're better to start adding variety and/or formula--so you may want to think about that rather than continuing to up the cereal amount). But, regardless, my milk supply has stayed consistent through all this, not dried up.

The hard thing is the books make you feel like supplementing is the road to no more milk. However, like I said, your milk supply might stay stead, or it might go down a little, but that's natural as you add new foods in your daughter's diet and it doesn't mean you can't continue to breastfeed. My milk supply has stayed steady because he still drains everything every time he eats. The way I saw it, it was more important to have a baby who wasn't hungry than to be manic about my milk supply (he hadn't gained weight in 3 weeks when I started supplementing). The other thing is, at this stage, for many women, no matter what they do, you can't bring up the supply (my doc said many women would "give their right arm" to only be supplementing 5-8 ounces a day at this stage, and that was when mine was 4.5 months old).

If however, you really want to increase your supply, an easy thing to try is Fenugreek supplements (you have to take a lot for about 2 weeks straight -- your pee should smell like maple syrup or it won't help, and after 2 weeks you stop). You can also pump after every feeding for about 10-15 minutes--you won't get anything but supposedly it will send the message to increase supply. If you pump between feedings you simply risk having less milk for your daughter unless you feed her the milk you pumped (at this stage, your milk supply doesn't adjust quickly like it did in the first few months). The way I saw it, if I spent 10 minutes pumping after feeding for 6-8 feedings a day, that was an hour to an hour and a half a day of pumping I could instead be spending with my son -- all for what exactly?!? Breastmilk is great but you've made it 6 months and if some of your daughter's diet comes elsewhere, you've still done an incredible job.

My advice? Take the herbs. Breastfeed your daughter when she's hungry. Supplement with formula, cereal, and start adding veggies, so that she can still eat when you don't have enough milk. And be proud you've made it 6 months and just enjoy your daughter and don't worry so much about your milk. It might not give her 100% of what she needs any more, but despite how it feels now, you're not going to dry up, so just give her what you can and try to feel good about that. It seems more reasonable to supplement than having a hungry baby, and frankly, at 6 months, my personal feeling is it's better for a baby to have a happy parent spending time with her than a stressed out parent hooking up to a pump -- though that is totally just my personal opinion.

And yes, this is hard. As an FYI, when this happened to me, I did cry because there is so much pressure around this issue and I thought it was the beginning of the end of that special bond. But that hasn't happened. All that happens is sometimes his food comes shaken and stirred. However, again, not quite having enough milk is not the same as having no milk -- so if your real worry is it's too soon to stop breastfeeding, just remember it's normal to be introducing solids now and you can probably still breastfeed as long as you want even if she gets part of her food elsewhere.

Good luck!

It sounds like everything is fine. To be able to pump anything after feeding a child is GREAT. Remember that a child is much more efficient at getting milk from the breasts than a pupm is. If you are worried that your daughter is wanting more solids, it probably isn't a problem as it sounds like your daughter is enjoying the new foods.

If you really feel like you need to up your supply, keep pumping a could time a day, each day, drink water & eat oatmeal or granola bars.

HTH

Have a GREAT day!

S.

Ask your OBGYN to recommend a lactation specialist or ask them for suggestions.

However, you can start integrating other solids, like veggies and fruits at six mos. At six mos my kids were eating all the cereals with veggies mixed in for lunch and dinner and fruit and cereal for breakfast, a bottle afterwards, another in between.

I stopped breast feeding for reasons I had to with both of mine, my second due to not producing enough milk and having one hungry growing baby boy, so I supplemented with formula. Then by 6 mos he was strictly on formula. By 10 mos solely on people food and formula then a year ate whatever we did and milk.
It was fine for them, both of my kids are very healthy and though it is great to breast feed, if you cannot and you have for the first six mos you gave her a lot of what she needs already. Just don't stress yourself out about it. I am sure if you even got on the LaLeche website you can find help for your situation.

I had to stop with my daughter at 3 mos and she thrived and did fine on formula, no ear infections or allergies, none of the things they say can happen if you don't breast feed. It was hard however she did fine.

You want what is best for your baby of course, pump what you can and don't feel badly for supplementing the difference. Her getting some during the day is better then nothing. Try giving her a variety of solids now and trying those out. Rice cereal NEVER filled my kids up, oatmeal and mixing in veggies worked wonders and then I put in the babyfood meats.

Make sure you pump at night... I know that sucks, but has to be done. I am a night owl so for me it wasn't hard. I didn't go to bed until 11-12 so I got a good pumping in before bed. I know for others that isn't always so easy. But try the best you can- it will help!!
The main reason I know is because once my daughter started sleeping through the night I was so thrilled! I was excited to not have to breastfeed all night and could get a good sleep in. BUT of course milk supply went down. It was only after my sister was like hello you have to pump at night as well. Sure enough as soon as I did that my milk came right back... so do the best you can and see how that works. Sounds like you are doing everything else right! Good luck...

I got low on breast milk when baby was just three months. I started drinking healthy nursing tea to boost my supply and got better results.