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How is it despite two doses of mastitis and insanely bad nipples (all of which I'm on the recovery side of now) my milk is still in over supply. I'm sure I could feed a small nation of children!
Why is it that some women don't make enough? Friends of mine said they struggled to get past 3 months of bfing because they didn't produce enough. It doesn't seem fair. What makes this milk supply?? Why the extremes? What affects it?
I was the same in the beginning too hun, especially with DS1. In these early days, your hormones are stimulating your supply, as well as your lo feeding. Once the postpartum hormones drop off, you will find that your supply settles down. Some mums still have oversupply after the first weeks but even then not to the extreme that you are finding now.
There are reasons why some mums don't make enough milk and thankfully they are not too common - they can be hormone related such as if there are thyroid issues, some mums have insufficient glandular tissues and there are some other medical reasons. However feeding to routine rather than feeding on demand can also affect supply, and things like birth interventions and mum/baby separation can make it harder to establish a supply. So sometimes it is not that the mum can't produce enough but rather that she's not been given the right information and support to produce enough, or that she's had hurdles that have been too hard to overcome.
It could be that your prolactin levels haven't levelled out yet. Mine were ridiculously high and I had such oversupply I couldn't believe it. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do medically wise to force a more reasonable supply without stopping it all together, so it's a matter of balancing the supply v's demand element, and making sure your breasts get drained to avoid repeat mastitis. Hang in there, won't be long til those hormones get themselves under control.
The ABA has some info brochures you can get on oversupply, and also have some info on their site:
https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/bf-.../too-much-milk
I was the same, It seemed ridiculous to me the amount of milk I made. I first got mastitis after missing just 1 feed and my baby was almost 5 months old at this stage! I then kept getting mastitis and blocked milk ducks as she had severe reflux and had pain association with me. Broke my heart I had all the milk in the world but a baby that hated drinking it! My supply never did settle. I took the drugs when I had to stop feeding her as she was very underweight from reflux and not feeding and even with the drugs I ended up with the worst case of mastitis - They did nothing to dry me up. I am obviously a milk machine
I really loved my oversupply. If I have it again, I'll donate my milk. I was feeding DD 1-2 hourly, as well as pumping after some feeds...I'd get 1.5-2 litres a day, just from pumping maybe 4 times a day! I felt really lucky to have loads of milk. We'd use it on cereal, in all of our baths, when sick, I made yogurt and custard out of it :)
Razzberry, unfortunately those drugs that are sometimes used to dry up supply only work in the first few weeks of lactation, while the postpartum hormone levels are high. From around the 6 - 12 week mark these don't have any impact as you found. It is unfortunate that your medical profressional who prescribed them didn't know enough about lactation to offer you real support in your weaning - or refer you to the ABA to give you some good information about weaning.
It sounds like you had a really rough time hun. How are things going this time around?
MantaRay - wow, thanks for letting me know! i had tried weaning without the drugs but each time i tried to drop a feed i very quickly developed mastitis and/or blocked ducs. this was after massaging the lumps, hot and cold compresses and expressing for comfort. Feeding was incredibly stressful as my dd would be screaming and I would be crying trying to get her to feed. I am sure the stress was not helping things and my hormones felt all over the place. I had seen lactation consultants through the baby health centre, also at the private hosp where I had my DD and then at tresillian but none was able to get her feeding properly again once she associated me with pain. Now almost 3 years on, It is even more obvious just how much pain and suffering my dd was in from the reflux. She has just had an endoscopy but they didn't see any cause for her ongoing reflux so back to square one. We are now weaning really slowly off the meds again and then when symptoms return she will have another endoscope.
This time round my son started on neocate formula you get on prescription, He has reflux too (though not as bad) but I did not want to go through all the things we went through with my dd. It was a really hard decision to stop breastfeeding but I was heading full steam ahead into PND (again) and having a baby crying after every feed is just an awful feeling. I weaned over 3 weeks from week 6-9 and didn't take any drugs as I was so sick last time and was scared too. My supply was still big this time but not like it was 1st time round. My bb's were never rock hard and massive like the first time. Weird cause my son was a much more efficient feeder and didn't have pain association like my dd did.
This time I was able to miss a feed and just express when uncomfortable and slowly was able to stop.