Remember that your breast’s will naturally increase your supply. The more milk your baby drinks from your breast, then the next day your breasts will make that much milk ready in anticipation. The baby’s suckling stimulates breasts to produce more milk, so while baby is at your breast suckling there will be milk flowing.
If your baby is not feeding and suckling well, or you start to feed baby with formula, then your breasts will be making less milk as baby will not be getting their food from breastfeeding. This will cause your milk supply to decrease.
Here are some things that you can try to boost your breast milk supply.
- Eat 3 healthy meals per day, plus healthy snacks and drinks.
- Drink whenever you are thirsty.
- Tiger’s Milk
- Lactation Boosting Cookies
- Complan Milk Shakes
- Porridge
- Fenugreek
- Weleda Nursing Tea
- Domperidone (prescribed by doctors and midwives)
- Drink a glass of water after every feed
- Expressing with a breast pump after feeding baby
- Sleep and rest!
Also…is there really a problem with supply? The best way to tell is by output. If baby is fussy in the evening, this doesn’t mean that the supply is dropping off, its just normal behaviour for babies to cluster feed in the evening, and the milk will be there as long as you put baby to the breast – which might be VERY frequently at that time of the day – but its normal, and doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there.
Often your supply feels like it has decreased but really it has just started to even out and baby is getting just what they need. It can take a good 3months until supply settles.
If your baby cries after a feed, the problem may be that baby is tired or has wind – it may not be due to hunger.
