If you’re worried that you’re not producing enough breast milk for your baby, you’re not alone.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that approximately 75 percentTrusted Source of new mothers start off breastfeeding their babies, but many stop either partially or completely within the first few months. One of the most common reasons for this is worry about insufficient milk production.
For many women, your milk supply is just fine. However, if you do need to increase your breast milk production, there are ways to do it.
Read on to learn how to increase your breast milk production using several evidence-based methods and some practices mothers have sworn by for centuries.
How to increase breast milk production
The following are things that you can do to increase breast milk production. How long it’ll take to boost your milk supply depends on how low your supply is to begin with and what’s contributing to your low breast milk production. Most of these methods, if they’re going to work for you, should begin working within a few days.
1. Breastfeed more often
Breastfeed often and let your baby decide when to stop feeding.
When your baby suckles your breast, hormones that trigger your breasts to produce milk are released. That’s the “let-down” reflex. The let-down reflex is when muscles in your breasts contract and move the milk through the ducts, which happens shortly after your baby begins breastfeeding. The more you breastfeed, the more milk your breasts make.
Breastfeeding your new baby 8 to 12 times a day can help establish and maintain milk production. But this doesn’t mean that more or fewer feedings indicates a problem.
2. Pump between feedings
Pumping between feedings can also help you increase milk production. Warming your breasts before pumping can help make you more comfortable and pump easier, too.
Try pumping whenever:
You have milk left over after a feeding.
Your baby has missed a feeding.
Your baby gets a bottle of breast milk or formula
