After my son was discharged from the hospital we pretty much decided to take him straight home with the only stop being the closest Shoppers Drug Mart for bottles and formula. On our way home I received a call from our public health nurse looking for an update on how everything was going. I let her know of our troubles with breastfeeding, our son’s hospital stay for dehydration and that we were going to be starting him on formula. After listening to what has transpired over the last few days she offered to set me up with the local lactation consultant.
I took her up on her offer. I wasn’t quite ready to completely give up on breastfeeding altogether and welcomed any help I could receive.
Going to see a lactation consultant turned out to be a helpful process. They weighed my son at each visit in order to track his progress and make sure that he was gaining the appropriate amount of weight (in a lot of cases I was actually told he was gaining too much weight each week).
They would also take the opportunity during these appointments to do something called a weighted transfer. This is where they would weigh my son before we breastfed and again before we switched breads and lastly at the end of the session. Doing so enabled us to know the exact amounts of breastmilk my son was getting from each side in an approximate 3 hour interval.
The very first weighted transfer we completed we got low numbers around 5 and 6. As well as all but one preceding transfer where we averaged around 20mls per side.
These were disappointing numbers. I put my son to the breast at each meal, I pumped regularly on a 3 hour schedule matching his meals to make sure that I drained my breasts and still I saw little to no increase.
After a couple of appointments my lactation consultant suggested that we try having me use Dompheridone as it has been regularly used to increase breastmilk successful in other women. After a brief disagreement with my family doctor on whether or not I should use it I was put on 30mg, 3 times a day in order to see if there would be an increase.
Taking Dompheridone in conjunction to Fenugreek, Blessed Thistle, the occasional delicious but fattening lactation cookie, mother’s milk tea and a beer a day I saw my production increase from pumping 5-10 ml between both breasts to 30-40 ml.
Currently I’ve dropped down to just taking the Dompheridone regularly and making sure to pump whenever we aren’t breastfeeding. I’ve learned that I absolutely hate pumping. That isn’t necessarily saying that I don’t still take the Fenugreek and blessed thistle combination or drink the mother’s milk tea, but I find that I’m not stressing myself out over this nearly us much as I had been in the beginning.
I was also advised by a second lactation consultant that the window of opportunity for building my breast milk supply ends at 6 weeks postpartum. I’m not completely sure how accurate this is, however I’ve decided that if it is the case, that I won’t continue to drive myself crazy over increasing my supply when my son is growing and healthy.
It is my belief that one of the reasons I wasn’t quite as successful as I might have been was the fact that I didn’t find out about the rule for pumping a minimum of every 6 hours. My son began sleeping through the night around the 5 week mark and I was way more than happy to begin sleeping through the night along with him. Because I did this, my body was receiving messages saying that my breasts were full and were not continuing to build up my supply. Since my son tends to sleep until 9-9:30 am these days, that means that I generally stay up until 3 am to complete my pumping.
I’ve also learned from a Mom’s group that I am apart of that some people use a process called Power Pumping. This is where you pump for 20 minutes, stop for 10, pump for 10, stop for 10 and then do a final 10 minutes of pumping. I’ve been continuing to use this pump at least once a day for the last month and I have seen minor increases from this.
I have no intention of giving up on breastfeeding any time soon. Even if Jake isn’t getting a full meal of breast milk from me at each meal, the breast milk he is receiving is still full of antibodies that make it worthwhile.
For anyone who’s interested, the lactation cookie recipe I used can be found here. They’re absolutely delicious, but not the healthiest things in the world.
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article sponsered by Northern Michigan certified lactation consulting and Mother Hubbards Country Cupboard
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