When I started my pumping journey, I was pumping around 300ml (10 ounces) a day with maybe 1 or 2 sessions of breast feeding. Some days my supply was even lower, like 170ml (6 ounces). It was working out okay for maybe the first 2-3 weeks because my baby did not need to consume that much. Our baby was born 2 weeks early and had very low birth weight, she was getting jaundiced the first week post-birth. So we had to start supplementing with formula to ensure she picks up in weight. At 2 weeks, she was consuming about 60% breast milk and 40% breast milk. I was engorged during this period so I had a good amount of milk expressed. By 3 weeks, my engorgement started going away, and I started pumping less, around the 200-300ml area, and so our baby was getting about 50% breast milk and 50% formula. I didn’t know why I wasn’t producing enough milk, I remember thinking I had oversupply because of my breast engorgement, but I don’t think the two are necessarily correlated. Around a month later, my mom came to stay with us for 2 weeks, and she said we weren’t feeding our baby enough. We had no idea because we were following our doctors guideline on relatively how many milliliters she should be consuming at that point. It made sense because she would always continue sucking on the bottle after every feed. So our baby’s full bottle intake went from 400ml a day to 600ml a day, and now she was consuming more than 50% formula over my breast milk. My daily breastmilk supply was just hovering around 250-350.
Since it was just a month since I gave birth, and with our baby being born two weeks early, I thought maybe it was still early for me, and that eventually my supply will increase. Supposedly women reach their peak breast milk supply closer to around 2 months. As we were getting closer to two months, I tried to pump more often. Breast milk is a supply and demand cycle, the more you remove the milk, the more milk you produce. So I tried power pumping, thinking that a few days of this will surely increase my supply. Since my mother was over helping out, I had the additional time during my day to pump as often as I wanted to. So I was power pumping almost every day for a week, and averaging around 12 pump sessions per day. I remember there was even one day when I pumped 17 times. Sad to say, but my supply did not increase significantly. My breasts were becoming sore from all the pumping and I decided I needed to see a lactation specialist to understand why my supply was low.
After my visit with the lactation specialist, her recommendation was that I should breastfeed as often as possible. At that point, I was only breastfeeding once or twice a day since my baby was always so sleepy and bottle feeding seemed to work better. During my visit with the lactation specialist, even she noticed how sleepy my baby was when feeding from my breast. But she insisted that if I start incorporating more breastfeeding, my body would release more oxytocin, and it would signal my body to produce more milk. She also suggested incorporating a lactation smoothie into my daily diet.
So I started breastfeeding more. At first it was hard to tell if I was producing more milk, because you can’t tell how much milk your baby is drinking. And my pump volume did go down since the milk was being consumed directly. It was hard in the beginning, because my mother and my husband insisted on giving her the bottle since it was so much easier. Oftentimes after a breastfeeding session, my baby would cry because she was still hungry. And then we’d end up just topping her off with formula. It was so demoralizing having your baby cry after breastfeeding because she was still hungry but her mother’s breasts were as dry as the Sahara desert. I decided to look into other ways to boost my supply and purchased brewer’s yeast, lactation pills, and moringa powder. I found out about brewer’s yeast because I was watching an influencer’s story and she had a whole post about how she increased her milk supply, which included adding brewer’s yeast to her daily morning smoothie. Another influencer whose baby was just two months older than mine had shared on her story that she takes lactation pills daily to boost her supply. And moringa was recommended to me by my OB/GYN during my 6 week postpartum visit, she had said that moringa is a great alternative to fenugreek, which is often found in lactation pills and is more friendly on the stomach since most experience gas with fenugreek.
Now my daily routine for the last 1-2 months has been making a moringa latte by heating up one cup of milk and mixing it with 1 Tablespoon of brewers yeast and 1 Tablespoon of moringa powder. Then I would take my lactation pills. Just doing these two critical things has slowly started helping me increase my supply. Around 2 months postpartum, I was producing roughly 600ml/day (20 ounces), at 3 months my supply increased to around 800ml/day (27 ounces), and now, I’m a day away from hitting 4 months postpartum, I’m averaging closer to 900ml/day (30 ounces), with my largest daily pump volume hitting 1020ml (34 ounces). On days where I forget to make my moringa latte, I notice my supply dipping a little. Or if I forget to take my lactation pills, I notice a dip as well. So I am confident that these additional supplements I’ve incorporated into my daily routine have helped me significantly increase my milk supply. My baby no longer is feeding off formula, and is 100% drinking breastmilk. I still breastfeed a few times a day, but definitely not every single feed. Really grateful to have discovered these other options because my initial goal was to primarily breastfeed my baby as long as I possibly could. We started out a bit rocky, but now I have a freezer supply going!
