I gave birth to a baby boy about a month ago. I have been breast feeding my baby since then and have not had any problems. However, I want to maximize my milk-making potential to meet his growing needs. What should I do?
The best thing you can do to increase your milk supply is to increase its demand. Human breasts are capable of producing enough milk to meet the growing demand. This is how women with twins and triplets are able to successfully breast feed their babies.
The first and most important thing to do is to express as much milk from the breasts as possible. By removing milk and emptying your breasts, you will be able to produce more milk to fill them back. The more often you empty them, the more milk your breasts will produce.
There are two ways by which you can remove milk from your breasts successfully. Firstly, nurse your baby frequently. Normally, new born babies should be fed every 2 to 3 hours. If your baby leaves your breast before the breasts are fully empty, you should pump milk after each session and store the pumped milk to feed the baby later on. The emptier your breasts are, the more rapidly they will produce milk.
Breast pumps have the ability to massage the nipples and areola area of the breasts which stimulates milk production. This is due to the hormones that are released by the breasts due to the massage. The more hormones are released, the more milk will be produced. Even if not enough milk is pumped after each breast feeding session, you should not worry about it, as your baby has already taken most of it.
The earlier you start removing milk from your breasts, the better it is. For breast feeding mothers, the first 3 weeks after giving birth should be dedicated to removing as much milk from the breasts as possible to increase breast milk production.