Breast Milk Production TED

[Anonymous]

My milk supply has greatly reduced while doing TED and it is starting to affect DD weight gain so I will probably have to start supplementing with formula. Does anyone have any suggestions for helping to increase my supply?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Fenugreek: 3 pills 3x/day + Blessed Thistle: 3 pills 3x/day. You can get both of these @ GNC or Whole Foods (& I’m sure online or other health food stores). This helped my supply greatly w/ my 1st ds after I had mastitis & supply dropped (also was losing too much weight post-partum).

As far as keeping up your supply while on TED… is it b/c you’re losing too much weight?

It is ok (supply-wise) to lose 1lb/wk but anything more than that can definitely affect your supply (& obviously if you’re still losing past your pre-baby weight-or your “ideal” body weight- that can affect it too).

I’ve lost about 10lbs since starting TED but very very slowly. When I trialed TED for 5 days (when Evan was 2wks old) I didn’t monitor any of my diet & lost 6 lbs in those 5 days & my supply suffered immediately.

The way I make sure I’m keeping some of the lbs on is to make sure I’m eating at LEAST 1500 calories/day – I aim for around 1800-2000 though… it’s best to be in the 1800-2200 range if you’re bfing. Also, I make sure to drink lots of fluids. The minimum is obviously 64oz but I usually shoot for 80oz+. Finally, I loosely monitor my fat intake. I closely count calories & oz of fluid, but don’t obsess about the fat. I add olive oil to EVERYTHING. The recommended fat intake is 30-50 g/day so I figure if olive oil has 14g/1 T. then I should be fine since I cook in it 3-4x/day.

HTH

[Anonymous]

I was also going to suggest upping your fat intake. Olive oil is great. Or, maybe try Sunflower oil? If it works for you, Lays has great potato chips that are only potatoes, sunflower oil, and sea salt. They were a great snack for me while on the diet.

[Anonymous]

This exact same thing happened to me and I did end up having to supplement with formula. I am not saying this to scare you just to let you know that it will be OK. I started at 4 months and at 7 months we are still BF 3-4x a day and only supplementing 2x. I tried all the things mentioned above and it didn’t help. But once I started supplementing it is like my body relaxed and the time I did nurse was SO much better. I hope you don’t have to, but if you do, rest assured you will still be able to BF. 🙂

[Anonymous]

I have really been making sure to eat every couple of hours and that has seemed to help. Hopefully, I will be able to start adding more foods soon that have more fat content. I already put olive oil on everything but am still losing weight.

[Anonymous]

i second the herbs. they work very well, however be careful…if your child has a wheat allergy, he/she may react. apparently wheat is used as a filler in some herbal capsules. i found this out the hard way.

also, yes to the constant eating and water consumption! and i do add oil to EVERYTHING. love the chips too, from lays, as they seem like a ‘treat’.

oatmeal, old fashioned. eat it by the bowl, cookies, whatever. this helps more than you think.

quinoa–one of the four non-wheat based grains. easy to make and very versatile. greatly helped me when i started losing a bunch of weight.

last but not least….pumping. i know it’s not the most desirable, but it does help. ‘power pumping’ is especially helpful…pump on for 10 minutes, off for 10 minutes for an hour (i do this after the kids go to ‘bed’ ). i’ve been told you only have to do this for a couple days to see an overall increase in your supply, but i do it pretty regularly. i did see a big increase when i started this.

HTH! have a great day!

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