I am a member of a couple great breastfeeding and pumping groups on Facebook. Recently, a mom had a post with 478 comments about how she increased her supply! It was a great post and she’s letting me share it here.
Her post:
My fiancé and I had planned a trip to Paris before we realized we’d be having a little angel. It took a lot of talk to decide she could stay with my parents and we would go as she would be over 2 months old.
One thing I would NOT compromise on was I wanted her to be breastfed. I did ALL my research and through trial and error in 6 weeks I managed to feed her every day AND pump and save 400 OZ enough to keep her breastfed through our trip!
I’m so beyond proud of myself and grateful for all the family and friends that supported and helped me with this!
If anyone has any supply issues or needs tips and tricks I feel like at this point I’ve mastered it because my supply was not naturally large but eventually we got there !! Pumping while on vacation is hard too but anything for my angel 💜💜💜
Her comments about the specifics:
This is what I have done, but before that How much are you producing a day? Do you track? I tracked all my pumps and OZ and recorded any breast feeds and their times as well and after 5 days I could really see my bodies routine so I knew about what I should produce (or in my case try to beat) a day, and it really helped along with my entire pump and eating routine! It also helps keep down your paranoia about not producing enough and lets you track what helps your success and if something you’ve done to change your routine has lowered your supply. I have been very diligent with this.
I pumped every 2 hours on the dot and I power pumped. ( 20-30 min pumping 10 min break 10 min pump 10 min break 10 min pump ) (simulating cluster feeding) and I power pumped for Every pump I could (seems like overkill but I was trying to produce A LOT) and I pumped 7 - 8 times a day
I had to mostly pump to up my supply but now I can go back to breastfeeding and pumping for extra now
it’s so frustrating !!! One thing I learned about my body personally was that fenugreek something a lot of nursing moms use to up their supply actually LOWERED mine, which is awful because it’s in everything everyone recommends ! so I found a great lactation cookie that has everything BUT fenugreek in it and it did wonders for me, I also went to my local Ralph’s and bought powdered flax seed and PUT IT IN EVERYTHING my favorite was 2 whole wheat pieces of toast in the morning with Nutella or peanut butter sprinkled flax seed and then chopped banana on top with oatmeal with flax seed and honey , a snack I’d use is you yogurt and flax seed and I am pretty sure I was drinking about 16 water bottles a day the more water you drink the more milk you’ll make your body HAS to be hydrated. I keep my calories high but healthy and add in a lot of veggies to give my milk some good nutrients and fats to keep my baby full (some women can produce a lot of milk but it’s more on the skim side so your baby stays hungry trying to up your healthy fat intake with help create fats in your milk ) I use like 3 avocados a day with just salt and pepper
Then when I pumped I’d power pump FOR EVERY SESSION which for me was 20-30 minutes of pumping 10 min break 10 min pump 10 min break 10 min pump this simulated cluster feeding and told my body to make way more milk for the baby.
I pumped about 7 - 8 times a day (but I was mostly pumping more than Breast feeding while I was building my supply) if your breast feeding then pump 30 minutes after a finished session and still try to get 6 - 7 pumping sessions in there and power pump as much as you can, IT’S SO HARD and I def had to pump while bouncing an annoyed baby lol but it worked and now I only have to pump Maybe 5 times a day to still get over 45 OZ
The MOST important thing for me was WATER and power pumping every 2 hours !!!
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