Supplementing at the breast.
When a mom is experiencing difficulty making enough milk for her baby, the usual suggestion from well meaning professionals is often, “Nurse your baby more —your body will rally and you will make more milk in just a few days.” This suggestion is based on the law of supply and demand. When more milk is removed from the breast, the breast will respond by making more milk. While this advice can be legitimate in some situations, many times it can result in an exhausted baby who, despite mom’s best efforts, can’t get enough milk to gain well. Continue reading
Mila was born 8lbs 7oz, healthy and passed all the health screening at the hospital before discharging. At our postpartum appointment 3 days after leaving the hospital, her weight loss was brought up as a concern. She seemed to be latching but she was not transferring enough milk and I was experiencing a lot of pain. Her losing more that 10% of her birth weight was addressed at her 7 day postpartum appointment with her pediatrician and we were sent to the breastfeeding center at the hospital that day for further investigation. 
n an ideal world, every mother-baby dyad would have access to thorough, accurate, compassionate lactation support from the prenatal period through weaning. Sadly, this is not the case, and sometimes the “support” new families receive is fraught with error– informed by poor (or no) training.