mammary melancholy
since we’ve tried literally everything under the sun to correct the sequel’s digestive issues, i figured it was time to look at my milk supply. what i’ve found this week has depressed me beyond belief. i started with three days of supplemental pumping. since i feed the sequel every four hours, i just added a pumping between feedings so that i was expressing every two hours. for three days, i went from my usual five feeds to NINE “milkings”. i really felt like that alone would leave me floating in milk. when i didn’t see any results from that (actually, it seemed like i was getting negative results… i went from a yield of 1 oz per pump the first day to less than an oz, as little as .25 oz, by the third day), i begged my baker friend to make lactation cookies for me. she graciously did so and also gave me her supply of flax and brewer’s yeast so that i could make more on my own. for the last couple of days, i’ve been eating about 5 cookies a day and drinking oat/pb/flax/brewer’s yeast smoothies. today, i went back to regular feeding schedule but i replaced all nursing with pumping so that i could really determine what i’m producing. for the main four feedings, from wake to bed, i produced less than 12 oz. from everything i see online, that’s less than 1/2 of what he should be getting in a day! i feel like a complete and utter failure and i don’t know what to do. everything i read says i should be able to rebuild my supply but despite all of the extra stimulation and nutritional supplements, i’m not even producing half of my baby’s needs. which begs the question… was i actually producing even less before all these efforts or are they just not working at all???
Leave a reply