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Home › Articles › Breastfeeding › Too Much Milk

Too Much Milk

How to Avoid Engorgement

By Melissa Clark Vickers, IBCLC

Pages:  1  2  3  

Preventing Engorgement
The best way to prevent engorgement is to nurse your baby as often as possible in the early days. Aim for at least eight to 12 feedings every 24 hours, and let your baby nurse at the breast as long as she will. Offer both breasts at each feeding, and start the next feeding with the breast she takes the least from during the last feeding.

If you experience any pain while nursing, ask for help, as this is a sign that something – most likely positioning – is not quite right. Feedings don't have to happen like clockwork, and it is OK to cluster some feedings and have one longer three-to-four-hour interval. The total number of feedings is more important than the spacing. Look for wet diapers and bowel movements that change from the black, tarry meconium to the mustard-colored normal breastfeeding stool. What comes out the diaper end is the best indication that something is going in the other end!

If your baby is sleepy, keep him close by and learn to watch for cues that he is hungry and ready to eat. Babies will cycle in and out of deep sleep every 90 minutes or so and in a light sleep stage will often nurse quite well. Look for Baby's eyes to move under his eyelids and smacking motions and noises from his mouth. He may suck on his hands as well. When you see these signs, go ahead and offer the breast to him. Don't wait for him to wake up and scream for his next meal!

Treating Engorgement
Engorgement can happen – and generally, the more complicated your delivery, the more likely it is to happen. Complications that include various pain medications during labor, and such interventions as forceps delivery and deep suctioning of the newborn, can make Baby more sleepy and unreceptive to frequent breastfeeding. And for whatever reason, you may miss feedings. Sometimes, even when Mom does everything "right," engorgement still happens. It is important to catch it as early as possible, and it is important to know how to treat it – just in case.

The key to relieving engorgement is removing the milk. That seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? Sometimes it isn't easy to do, though. When there is so much milk and extra fluid in the breasts, this can put pressure on the milk ducts such that they close down – like standing on a garden hose. Compresses are an effective method of helping that milk to flow. As a general rule, heat gets the milk flowing, and cold reduces swelling. Apply hot compresses to your breasts before nursing, and cold compresses after nursing. Disposable diapers make wonderful compresses, by the way.


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Re: Too Much Milk by mary on 10/23/2008 01:14PM

I just pump the milk, and iI am trying to quit, but I get so full, and I have had mastitis three times already, so I'm scared of getting too full. How can I do it without getting infection again?

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