Midwife: Sage Femme, Hebamme, Comadrona, Partera

Making milk is easy when you have a baby…in fact, our bodies start long before the birth of the baby. Once the placenta shears off the wall of the uterus, our body enacts many processes to begin actual milk production. Hormone levels rise and fall - and viola! There’s milk. Even if our babies do not suckle for the first three days at all - there’s milk!

I’m on day two of a medication called Domperidone. A drug originally available in the US for gastrointestinal disorders, one of the undesireable side effects was milk production! It was taken off the market by the FDA because of fear of cardiac issues - but this was only a problem when it was taken via IV by persons who were gravely ill. To date, there have been no serious side effects by women taking Domperidone to increase milk supply or relactate. A dear online friend sent me a huge supply and in the future, I will have to order further amounts from New Zealand or another country.

I’ve been drinking more water (still not as much as I need, I’m sure) and pumping or offering my breast to baby as much as possible. Last night, I saw continuous small droplets on my nipples throughout the time I was pumping.

Anyway, it’s so exciting to be working on this! I regretfully stopped nursing my daughter when she was 4 months old because I was suffering from postpartum anxiety/depression. Put on Prozac, it was STRONGLY recommended that I stop nursing because clinical trials were still up in the air then. I grieved later over the loss of our breastfeeding relationship - and how the mere action of nursing her could have helped with my depression.

Having baby C take my breasts even though they’re empty - even though she’s six months old - gives me hope. She will be surprised when milk actually starts coming out!

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