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Adjust your supply to better match baby's needs
- If baby is gaining weight well, then having baby nurse from only one breast per feeding can be helpful.
- If baby finishes nursing on the first side and wants to continue nursing, just put baby back onto the first side.
- If the second side becomes uncomfortable, express a little milk until you're more comfortable and then use cool compresses - aim for expressing less milk each time until you are comfortable without expressing milk.
- Avoid extra breast stimulation, for example, unnecessary pumping, running the shower on your breasts for a long time or wearing breast shells.
- Between feedings, try applying cool compresses to the breast (on for 30 minutes, off for at least an hour). This can discourage blood flow and milk production.
- If nursing one side per feeding is not working after a week or so, try keeping baby to one side for a certain period of time before switching sides. This is called block nursing.
- Start with 2-3 hours and increase in half-hour increments if needed.
- Do not restrict nursing at all, but any time that baby needs to nurse simply keep putting baby back to the same side during that time period.
- If the second side becomes uncomfortable, express a little milk until you're more comfortable and then use cool compresses - aim for expressing less milk each time until you are comfortable without expressing milk.
- In more extreme cases, mom may need to experiment a bit with time periods over 4 hours to find the amount of time per breast that works best.
- Additional measures that should only be used for extreme cases of oversupply include cabbage leaf compresses and herbs.
Even if these measures do not completely solve the problem, many moms find that their abundant supply and fast let-down will subside, at least to some extent, by about 12 weeks (give or take a bit). At this point, hormonal changes occur that make milk supply more stable and more in line with the amount of milk that baby needs.
Sometimes babies of moms with oversupply or fast let-down get very used to the fast flow and object when it normally slows somewhere between 3 weeks to 3 months. Even though your let-down may not be truly slow, it can still seem that way to baby. See Let-down Reflex: Too Slow? for tips. |
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