Low breast milk supply can be very stressful to a new mother. When my son was first born, he did not take to breast feeding until he was more than 1 week old. Before then, I pumped to get my milk going. Even once he began breast feeding, it was mostly for comfort as he often fell asleep after only a few minutes. So I mostly relied on pumping to try to increase and then maintain my breast milk supply. I remember this as being a very stressful experience as I had to pump every 2 hours around the clock to get enough milk for my son. Whenever I missed a pumping session, I noticed that my milk had decreased noticeably.
During my stay at the hospital after my son's birth, I attended a lactation clinic and had heard about fenugreek as a possible herb to increase breast milk supply. So after a month of pumping 12 times a day, I asked my doctor about using fenugreek. I was given the green light and began to take 2 capsules 3 times a day. Within a week, I only had to pump every 4-5 hours and had more than enough for my baby. I then started to freeze the milk so that I had an extra supply just in case.
Prior to taking fenugreek, I had done some research and had read that it could make one's urine and sweat smell like maple syrup. But I experienced another side effect: over production of milk. More precisely, over production of foremilk. My baby began showing signs of discomfort with gas as foremilk has more lactose, which is more difficult to digest than the fatty hindmilk. For each pumping session, I simply stopped pumping after the first few minutes, when the milk looked really thin, and dumped it. Then I continued pumping so that the foremilk to hindmilk ratio was lower. Whenever I breastfed my son, I manually expressed some of the foremilk over the sink beforehand. This worked well for us. Hope this helps you!
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