Breastfeeding: Keeping Your Supply Up!

As of today I have an entire month supply of breastmilk in our freezer. Many have been asking me, HOW?! Are you doing anything special to have so much milk? So, I figured I would answer these questions and give you the full in on all that I do to help promote a healthy breastmilk supply!

Let me first tell you about my situation. I am a stay at home mom to my almost 2 month old son. Because I stay at home he receives only one 3oz bottle at night from his dad for bonding but also so I can get some sleep. Other than this bottle he is directly breastfed and is fed on demand. This means that if he is showing the rooting cue (rooting is when your baby turns their face towards your skin and starts sucking or moving his mouth like he is searching for your breast) I would immediately get to where he could latch and feed him. This means sometimes he eats every hour and a half or he waits until around two hours.

5 key pieces to keeping my supply up:

1. Haakaa! I cannot possibly promote this little silicone “pump” enough. The haakaa doesn’t necessarily increase my supply but it does help me see what I have. You see when you breastfeed your baby on one side the other side is still having that initial letdown. Where does it go? For many it goes into a breast pad and into the trash or washer. Instead I attach the silicone haakaa to the opposite side and it catches the milk which I then bag and freeze. It can range from 1-3oz for most women but if you use this every time you feed you are looking at 2-4 6oz bags of breastmilk after a full day. This is how I get most of my freezer bags, I only actually full on pump once at night during my son’s bottle feed.

2. Lactation Cookies! A friend of mine shared her recipe with me which I have tweaked a few times just to my liking but it is always the foundation to my recipe! I eat 3-4 of these cookies a day and can tell the HUGE difference they make in my supply. The core components to helping build up breastmilk are brewer’s yeast (no it can’t be supplemented with regular yeast), ground flaxseed, and of course oats. If you would like this recipe send me a message and I will do a separate post on the cookie process. I highly recommend making them from scratch rather than trying to buy a brand of them (the cost...ouch!).

3. Gatorade! I drink G2 so it has less sugar in it but still has the electrolytes that I need. I have also drank pedialyte. The main thing is making sure to keep as hydrated as possible and sometimes the gatorade or pedialyte gives me that extra boost I really need.

4. Speaking of hydration...WATER! Water sounds like a common sense thing to most who hear it but I promise it will make or break your supply in a heartbeat. How much water do you need to drink then? Well, in my case I have this handy dandy water cup from the hospital when I gave birth that holds 28oz of water I at a minimum drink 3 full cups a day. I also tend to have a glass of milk and the 2 small bottles of gatorade. So I would suggest the amount of intake should probably be somewhere around 100oz.

5, Oats! Oats have been highly recommended for breastfeeding moms for years. So every morning I eat a bowl of oatmeal. For some this can get boring but I do strawberry or apple cinnamon oatmeal each day and I don’t really mind. I know that it is helping to give me an extra boost to my breastmilk and that is what matters the most for me.

So there you have it! Really those are the only 5 things I do on a daily basis to promote my breastmilk supply. I will note I have heard rave reviews about UpSpring Fenugreek supplements but I am unable to use them. Fenugreek is known to cause gassiness in babies (sometimes even enough to be considered colic by some parents and physicians) and so the NICU does not allow the donation of breastmilk that contains this supplement. I also have a pretty gassy baby to begin with so I don’t want to add to his potential discomfort. (Know that fenugreek does not cause gas in ALL babies just is statistically significant enough to have to be reported that it can).