The health benefits of breast milk have long been proven. But it is not always enough. During periods of lactation crises, it is very difficult to continue breastfeeding. A young mother needs to understand that there is not enough milk and take measures to increase lactation.
How to understand that a baby is not enough milk
It is necessary to pay attention to the condition of the baby. You can see that there is not enough breast milk by several signs: the baby cries a lot, almost does not sleep and sucks for a long time. To check if the child is full, use a scale. Children can be rented at the clinic. The naked baby is weighed before and immediately after feeding. In a situation where he eats too little milk, urination is rare and concentrated, the urine becomes bright yellow. With prolonged difficulties with lactation in a nursing mother, her baby gains little weight for a month. The pediatrician will definitely pay attention to the insufficient increase at the next preventive appointment.
There is another sign that a nursing mother is not having enough breast milk. She does not feel hot flashes, her breasts are constantly empty and do not have time to fill in between feedings. When there is a lot of milk, it is dense, heavy, with light pressure on the area around the nipple, a stream immediately sprays. If a woman does not observe all this, then she probably has little breast milk.
What to do to increase lactation
A plentiful hot drink is a must for any nursing mother. The best drink to increase lactation is hot milk tea. Whole milk is not recommended due to the high risk of allergies and colic in an infant. It is advisable to drink a mug of hot drink some time before feeding, so that milk can flow into the breast. Approximately 30 minutes will be enough for this.
If there is not enough breast milk, it is necessary to apply the baby for feeding especially often. It is in this case that you should not observe a 3-4 hour break at all. Some nursing mothers say that the baby literally "hung" on the breast for hours when he had little milk. This is normal, you just have to endure such a period. Frequent and long feedings increase lactation, milk will increase in a couple of days. It is especially important to feed a lot at night. In the dark, a hormone is actively released that regulates lactation. The more a mother puts on her breast at night, the more milk she produces the next day.
To help a nursing mother, special teas to increase lactation. You can buy them at a pharmacy or supermarket. Not everyone shares the opinion about the effectiveness of this tool. But many of these teas contain herbs with a sedative effect. This helps to calm down during difficult times when breast milk is scarce.
A calm emotional state of the mother is the key to restoring lactation in the volume necessary for the baby. And the child himself will cry less, feeling the confidence of the parent. On average, the period of a lactation crisis, when there is not enough milk or there is no milk at all, lasts several days, sometimes a week. This period is prolonged when a woman is under severe stress. For example, there was not enough milk at the time of the funeral of one of the relatives or friends of a woman. A vivid negative experience affects the general condition of the mother and her ability to continue breastfeeding. No need to panic, lactation can most often be restored.
But there are times when you have to spend a lot of mental and physical strength to feed your baby only with breast milk. Then it is better for a nursing mother to think: is it really so important to continue to fight for breastfeeding, or is it already to introduce the formula? Sometimes it is more useful for the psychological state of the mother to stop such a struggle and switch to artificial feeding. There will be no benefit from breast milk if a woman with tears tries to squeeze out at least a little milk every time she feeds, blames herself for the lack of it and fights with all her might to continue feeding the baby for up to a year.
