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I bought a shirt this time around, for my third baby, with a mermaid on it and text saying, “milky maids.” There’s a photo way back in my Instagram if you want to see it. Being milky, isn’t always fun, but it is so important to your baby. I’m still nursing my third baby boy now, and I am so thankful for the tools and tricks I’ve learned to keep my milk supply up. I’ve dealt with very difficult, stressful times, all while nursing a baby, and I never once let my milk supply suffer. If you are struggling with breastfeeding in general, I highly recommend this resource. It taught me a ton, which I didn’t even know, I didn’t know…if that makes sense! It will ease a lot of fears, and ensure you are set up in the right direction.
Why does milk decrease?
There are reasons your milk can decrease. You may not be eating enough of the right nutrition, you may be just too stressed and tired, your hormones can be out of balance…there are a lot of factors. I go over, what I believe is the MAJOR reason many moms suffer a low supply, and that is lack of nutrition in my postpartum recovery program. I have a specific breastfeeding diet plan, with recipes that not only boost supply, but also help you lose the baby weight. Nutrients are so, so important!! I can’t stress that enough. Other reasons that milk supply seems to decrease is a lack of nursing. I learned all about this here, and it helped tremendously.
Sometimes, you just need more milk than you have because you are storing it for going back to work. I think that’s a large reason many moms want to increase there supply, so they can continue to nurse their babies while they are gone. Pumping is not that fun, but what a wonderful invention to allow mothers to continue to nurse their babies, even when they have to be away or go back to work. So, I have some great tips that will literally increase your milk supply dramatically. My sister is a twin mama, and she was a pumping machine for her little babies. She went back to work after three months, and she was able to store enough milk to nurse her babies a full year without supplementing and working 4 full days a week. I really hope these items help you, like they did me and her!
In my years of helping mamas lose weight while breastfeeding, there was a protein powder missing that was specifically designed for breastfeeding mamas to combat these sugar cravings and fully nourish mamas. I am a firm believer in nutrition for milk supply, so I created Milk Dust. Milk Dust is literally your best friend for lactation and weight loss. It has a milk-boosting herb blend, plenty of protein, sugar-craving-busting herbs like Tumeric, Cinnamon Bark Root and minerals like Chromium which have all been used to balance blood sugar. In addition to all these fabulous items. I hand-picked specific vitamins like Folate (L-Methylfolate) because folate is still important during lactation! Almost just as important as in pregnancy. I also hand-picked vitamin B12 for energy, and super foods like Chlorella, Spirulina, Spinach, Blueberries and more. The protein powder is free of soy, gluten, dairy and corn. It is NON-GMO, Vegan and plant-based!! I highly recommend you check it out if you are craving sugar. It is only sweetened with Stevia, Monk Fruit and Organic Cane Juice, which means there is very little sugar, but it is very sweet, so you still get to drink something like a milkshake!
There is no other clean, super nutrient-dense protein powders that are specifically made for postpartum healing, nourishment, lactation and weight loss. There are thousands of mamas waiting for this to launch, and I am so excited to finally have a product that helps mamas nourish themselves while also losing weight.
Lactation Cookies: my sister made these more than I did. She loved them, and noticed an immediate difference after eating a few of these in one day. They actually have a lot of good, nutritious items in them. Oats, coconut oil, cinnamon, chocolate, flaxseed and brewers yeast. These are all ingredients that are said to increase your supply, combined in one happy cookie, and it works! If you don’t have time to bake much, like me, here are some of the cookies I bought, which helped just as much as the ones my sister made.
I have the biggest sweet too while I am nursing, so all of these were like candy to me, and I really noticed an increase in supply after eating three of the cookies, or two of the bars in one day, in addition to the next items.
The 5 Best Foods to Lose The Baby Weight and Pump Up Your Milk Supply
I mentioned this Mother’s Milk tea in another post, and it is really the best tea for increasing your supply. The fennel in the tea, which tastes like black licorice, seriously increased my supply. I would drink a few cups, three or four the day before I needed to pump extra. That day, I was overloaded, and I had no problem getting some extra milk stored away. I have to be careful because I’ve gotten Mastistis three times now, due to too much milk.
Pump and Pump some more. My sister literally woke herself up in the middle of the night to pump, pumped in the car on the way home, and basically whenever she wasn’t nursing, she pumped. This kept her supply up, and she found that sometimes the manual expression pump did better than the automatic because she was able to get more out. Other times, she was driving, so she couldn’t manually pump, but if you want to increase your supply overnight, you need to get hooked up to the pump when your not attached to your baby. It’s basically forcing your body to produce more milk. I found that if I could nurse the baby on one side, and pump the other, I got a lot more milk out! Then, I had the baby nurse that side again, to help encourage it to produce more milk. Here are the pumps my sister suggests. She did more pumping than I did, so I take her word on these, and here are the 9 best breast pumps you can review as well.
I had this one, which worked great for me, but I didn’t have to pump that much. I used the tea and cookies, then I was able to pump enough extra milk, but if you need a good pump that will do the job, and nothing fancy, I thought it worked great!
This is the one my sister used, which she loved. Another trick she did was leave a pump at work. She had a smaller one like the one above, that she kept there, and another one at home. If you can afford two pumps, its a more convenient way to go, so you are set up to pump everywhere.
Drink A Beer: I actually don’t like beer at all, but my aunt told me that beer was great for your milk. I didn’t actually do this one, but I thought I’d mention for all the mamas who like a beer. You can have a beer at night and increase your milk supply! Check out what this post from Baby Center says,
Nursing moms are often advised by family and friends to relax and have a beer to help stimulate milk production. And it’s true that a polysaccharide in the barley used to make beer seems to stimulate prolactin, which helps moms make more milk. (The good news, if you like the taste of beer, is that nonalcoholic beer has the same stimulating effect.)
I’d like to hear if anyone has tried this and experienced more milk! I tried to drink some, but never liked it enough to finish the beer, or I’m assuming consume enough of the barley to increase my milk.
All the above though, have seriously worked for me. To the point of over production and extremely chubby and healthy babies.
If you’re also working on losing the baby weight, check out my post on the top 5 foods to help you lose the weight and increase your milk supply.
12 Comments
That Medela hand pump ups my milk supply like CRAZY!
I also had low supply problems I used fenugreek at first 3 pills 3x a day and it helped at each pumping session before I would get 1/2 oz and it went to 1&1/2 oz but it didn’t quite satisfy my baby and I had to top off with formula then I got healthy nursing tea and I went from 1&1/2 to 3&1/2 oz.
the fenugreek tea was amazing for me! Glad you were able to increase your supply!
My midwife recommend an ice cold can of Guinness every day for milk supply! Didn’t like the idea but was willing to try, if it meant staying off formula! 7.5 months pp and I love my daily can of Guinness. It’s really good super cold and makes a huge difference in my supply. Not to mention the magnisum is good for relaxing & easing muscle pain.
Hummus has been helpful for me too, along with; Oatmeal, Flax, brewers yeast, Spinach, kale & protein powder in a smoothie with frozen fruit of choice(I love Pineapple & strawberries or Mango & Peaches) with coconut water & almond milk. Miss that one morning a wk and I know it by that afternoon!
These are all great tips! I love that you drink a Guinness every day haha! Its great to hear what worked for you, so anyone else can try to see if it will help them as well! Thank you for sharing!
I used Fenugreek and know how well that helps for milk supply but it made me super gassy. So, I wanted to try the supplement instead and I am happy to say “Healthy Nursing Tea” has helped for sure. I noticed an increase in my supply within just a few days which I was pleasantly surprised by.
That’s great! send the link to the Healthy Nursing Tea, so maybe it can help someone else too!
Very resourceful. My wife is a new mom and sometimes she feels overwhelmed by the whole breastfeeding thing. I am telling her to read the blog. I’m sure she’ll find some useful tips for take away.