03/10/2021
Great Read on breastfeeding‼❤
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=4542385539111771&id=390648490952184
There are some questions around breastfeeding that every.single.parent asks. I hear this one so often, and I’m sure it’s googled all the time. It deserves it’s own post to clear up all the confusion.
Every one week postpartum visit: “But how exactly does milk production work? If I breastfeed and then baby wants to eat 45 minutes later, don’t my breasts have to refill first?!”
🌟Lactating breasts are NOT like a cup full of liquid that can be emptied completely. They are more like a faucet, always containing milk but with the option of turning the faucet up high for more water (faster) or down low for a little bit of water(slower). In a lactating breast, as long as milk is removed, milk is being made, it’s simply a matter of how fast. Early postpartum, milk is made very fast, 2oz or more per hour. At 12 months or even 24 months postpartum, if baby is still breastfeeding, milk is still being made but probably a lot less volume per hour depending on how often baby is breastfeeding.
Like being pregnant, lactation is a physiologic state. Hormones are cued to behave in synchrony after you have your baby, to begin and maintain lactation. How fast the breasts make milk depends on:
🏥 Days postpartum
Days 5 to 14 postpartum breasts tend to make much more milk than baby needs, but this will automatically adjust sometime around week 2 through week 6 postpartum, when your hormones take more of a backseat role to lactation and your supply responds to the amount of milk removed up until that point. Milk production/how fast milk is being made begins to slow down. This is a good thing, because too much milk can cause problems.
⏱How frequent and effective milk is being removed.
With frequent, effective(important to note that one) breastfeeding or pumping, your supply should be adequate for baby’s volume needs per day, and baby or the pump will maintain that volume for as long as you continue to remove the milk from the breast. How frequent and effective milk is removed tells the breast how much(how fast) milk needs to be made. A baby who is going through a growth spurt and is breastfeeding every hour for 25 minutes at a time is going to keep breasts drained, very little milk in the breast means very low amounts of FIL and virtually no pressure on the “milk sacs”(more on this later). These messages tell lactating breasts to make more milk, fast. That cluster feeding baby can breastfeed again in an hour, and there will be milk in the breast ready for baby to eat. Since frequency and effectiveness of milk drainage tells milk production rate to increase/decrease… you can see why milk supply fluctuates throughout lactation. Cluster feeding can temporarily increase supply, and baby’s first long stretch of sleep can temporarily decrease supply. Key word = temporary.
🤱 Parent milk storage capacity(amount of glandular tissue in the breast)
No pair of breasts are the same. Some are large, some are small, sometimes one is large and one is small. Breasts are composed of fascia, ligaments, blood vessels, fatty tissue, and mammary tissue, all contributing to breast size/appearance. ONLY mammary tissue determines milk storage capacity. This is why small breasts with ample mammary tissue can have oversupply/too much milk and large size breasts with very little mammary tissue can have low supply/too little milk. Since we can’t see inside the breasts, we don’t know which parent has which by looking at breast size. FIL(a component in milk) and physical pressure of milk volume on the cells in milk sacs inside the breast affect milk production turning up or down(so to speak). This is why depending on how much mammary tissue a parent has, determine how often milk needs to be drained to maintain a healthy milk supply. Is it starting to make sense why some babies feed every 90 minutes and some feed every 4 hours, but both can grow perfectly healthy and normal?
There is no real point in time that breasts are truly empty. Those times when baby is cluster feeding, or a pumping session happens right before baby needs to breastfeed...are not a big deal, the breasts will respond to the frequency milk is removed.
💡In the NICU, when a baby can not tolerate feeding by mouth, sometimes we drain breasts with a pump and latch baby directly after so baby can get the exposure to colostrum/human milk without having to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing. Baby still gets tiny amounts of colostrum, but we would limit baby's feeding time because the breasts are quickly beginning to synthesize milk again.
This post is about normal lactation progress, it applies to most but not all. If you have concerns about endocrine disorder and milk supply, a lack of normal breast changes after birth, or you’re concerned about your baby’s weight gain, see an IBCLC for a comprehensive feeding evaluation. We can explain normal progress and identify if there is a problem in need of a special care plan💜
-Eden Nevarez, IBCLC
