This is one of the most commonly asked breastfeeding questions. When mothers observe certain normal changes and behaviors, they may assume their milk supply has decreased. This is often a “false alarm.” Other times, a mother’s milk supply may truly need to be increased.

At times, mothers are unnecessarily alarmed about their milk supply. They may not be aware of the normal process of breastfeeding. For example, by about the time a baby reaches 6 weeks to 2 months in age, mother’s body has learned how much milk to make. Around this time, many women no longer feel “full.” In addition, baby may be only nursing for five minutes at a time. These are not signs of decreased milk supply. They simply mean that both mother and baby are becoming more adept at breastfeeding. Mother’s body has adjusted to the requirements for her baby and baby has become very efficient at removing the milk.

Some mothers become concerned about their milk supply if their baby begins to have fewer bowel movements. By about 6 weeks after the birth, colostrum is no longer present in a mother’s milk. So this may mean that baby’s bowel movements will decrease to one every day or even a few times each week. This is normal.

Another age-related “false alarm” is that babies will experience several “growth spurts” in the first few months of life. Generally, these occur around two to three weeks, six weeks and three months of age or they may happen at any time. These are days when baby wants to nurse longer and more frequently to build up mother’s milk supply. Follow baby’s lead on this by letting him breastfeed as often and as long as he wants. This will help bring up milk supply quickly. The breasts work on the law of supply and demand. The more baby “tells” mother’s breasts to make milk, the more milk she will have.

By allowing your baby to nurse more frequently for a few days, your body will receive the message that more milk is needed for your growing baby. Once your supply has increased, your baby will usually return to his usual routine.

If your baby is not gaining well or is losing weight, you will want to keep in close contact with your baby’s doctor. Often, improving breastfeeding techniques will help resolve the situation quickly, but in some cases slow weight gain may indicate a health problem.

Here are some ideas that may help you to increase your milk supply. Look them over and consider which might work for you.

• Contact a local La Leche League Leader for information and support.
• Encourage your baby to breastfeed frequently and for as long as he will.
• Offer both breasts at each feeding. Allow baby to stay at the first breast as long as he is actively sucking and swallowing. Offer the second breast when baby slows down or stops. “Finish the first breast first,” is a good general rule. (This technique gives baby lots of the fatty “hindmilk.”)
• Baby should end the feeding. He may do this by falling asleep and detaching from the breast after about 10 to 30 minutes of active sucking and swallowing.
• Be sure baby is latched on and positioned correctly at the breast, that is, lips should be on the areola (the darker skin area), well behind the nipple. An LLL Leader can help fine-tune positioning as well as suggest ideas to ease soreness. Breastfeeding isn’t supposed to hurt.
• A sleepy baby may benefit from “switch nursing” that is, switching breasts two or three times during each feeding. Switch breasts when baby’s sucking slows down and he swallows less often.
• All of baby’s sucking should be at the breast. Limit or stop pacifier use while encouraging baby to nurse more effectively. If you are supplementing, even temporarily, you can give the supplement by spoon, cup, or with a nursing supplementer. Contact an LLL Leader for assistance in using these.

This may be a stressful time. Take care of yourself. Pay attention to your own need for rest, relaxation, proper diet and enough fluids.

If you have more breastfeeding questions, visit the La Leche League website.

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PregnancyWeekly.com

You hear about the morning sickness, the wacky cravings, and even the swollen ankles before you get pregnant. But let’s be real, those symptoms are child’s play when it comes to what you’ll really have to deal with. TheBump.com asked moms-to-be to spill even the most TMI symptoms they wish they’d known were coming.

1. You might grow a beard.

   Okay, so maybe we’re exaggerating a tad. You probably won’t be sporting a full-on beard (hopefully!), but facial hair growth in general is a very real pregnancy symptom – so be on guard. Your raging hormones can be blamed for this one, since they’re what’s causing your hair to grow at super-fast speeds and maybe even in some new (and embarrassing) places. But at the end of the day, it’s a small price to pay for baby; so buy a home waxing kit and remember, it will all end soon.

2. A good bowel movement could feel like a distant memory.

   Sadly, constipation plagues many mamas throughout their pregnancies, since the flow of hormones can make your belly muscles relax, turning defecating into a rough process. Your uterus is also growing and putting added pressure on your bowels, which may be yet another factor why things aren’t quite in working order. Try to fight back by adding more fiber to your diet, drinking extra water, keeping active, staying on top of your prenatals, and living by this motto: “When you gotta go, you gotta go…”

3. You’ll have insane gas you can’t even blame on the dog.

   Let us just start with: It happens to the best of us. With that said, crazy pregnancy gas is, unfortunately, not always something you can avoid. With your body working double-time making hormones like progesterone and relaxin, muscle tissue around your bod will start to relax – especially around your GI tract. This causes the food you eat to move through your system more slowly, thereby causing you to bloat. Altogether, these factors can prove to be a pretty nasty combo. Our advice: Lay off the gassy foods for awhile, since they’ll just add to your troubles. Other than that, all you can do is grin and bear it – and hope that your partner’s a good sport.

4. Two words: Uncontrollable drooling.

   Nighttime drooling certainly isn’t sexy, but hey, sometimes you just can’t avoid it. Nobody knows exactly why, but it’s pretty common for your hormones to cause your body to produce way more saliva than normal when you’re pregnant. This can definitely lead to some pretty gross situations on your pillow, but also be embarrassing during the daytime too – because yes, the drooling isn’t just a problem at night. So what can you do? Brush your teeth more often, swish around some minty mouthwash, and pop in a piece of sugar-free gum to try and get dry in the mouth.

5. You’ll burp like a frat boy.

   If you’re burping like crazy these days, chances are it’s for the same reasons that you’re so gassy. Everything’s getting a bit crowded in there, making it hard to avoid some of the nasty side effects and discomfort. But at least baby doesn’t feel your pain. Yep, that’s right, even though you may be letting out teenage-boy-style burps, baby remains blissfully unaware of all your gas problems from inside your belly. Though you may not be able to get rid of the burping altogether, all you can do is steer clear of drinks with a lot of fizz (aka soda) and hope for the best.

6. Grooming your lady bits could become the bane of your existence.

   Sad but true: With your belly growing by the minute, it’s inevitable that there will come a time when you won’t be able to see what’s going on down there – or tend to it. And this definitely presents problems when it comes to personal grooming, since (as we’ve already established) your body kicks things up a notch in the hair-growth department when you’re pregnant. If you’re going into panic mode about what someone might encounter if you don’t get things taken care of – stat, you’re not alone. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope – it’s time to start shopping around town for a good waxer. Trust us, you’ll thank us later. (And we’re pretty sure your partner will too.)

7. There will be more discharge.

   Gross, we know. But it’s the truth. Your bod is making way more estrogen now and causing more blood to flow down to your lady bits, which means excess discharge is bound to happen. And while it’s totally normal, it sure ain’t pretty. So if you haven’t already been introduced, it’s time to meet your new best friend: the pantiliner. You’re welcome.

8. The term “lightning crotch” will become a painful reality.

   Next to labor, you really haven’t felt true pain until you’ve been kicked in the vagina by your unborn baby. Of course, there are lots of different possibilities for why this might be happening to you, depending on what stage of pregnancy you’re at. It could be due to baby’s repositioning in your uterus, or maybe what you’re feeling will turn out to be some early Braxton Hicks contractions. Whatever the case, “lightning crotch” pretty much happens to all of us and isn’t necessarily a sign of anything bad. Consider it a rite of passage and try working on looking less shocked when it happens in public (because it will).

9. Kindergarten wasn’t the last time you’ll pee your pants in public.

   It’s true, “snissing” as it’s affectionately known on TheBump.com message boards, is an annoying and sometimes embarrassing side effect in the later stages of pregnancy. Baby’s resting on a lot of internal organs in there, including your bladder, which is why your body can’t help but leak a little. But don’t worry, you won’t need to throw on a pair of Depends any time soon. A mini-pad or even a pantiliner should do the trick for now, along with a good sense of humor.

10. Your vagina will actually grow.

    It’s a scary thought, but yes, your vagina could likely get bigger – even swell a bit – as you near that nine-month mark. No, it’s not pretty (whoever said pregnancy was?), but it doesn’t happen to everyone and it shouldn’t last too long. In short: Your body’s producing more blood now that you’re pregnant, and trying to re-route most of it to your uterus so baby can get enough nourishment. Unfortunately, your vagina may bear the brunt of the increased bloodflow you’re getting down there, which is what’s leaving you feeling tender or sore.

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PregnancyWeekly.com

A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a purpose quite different from infant nutrition – that of influencing the composition of the bacteria in the infant’s gut.

The details of this three-way relationship between mother, child and gut microbes are being worked out by three researchers at the University of California, Davis — Bruce German, Carlito Lebrilla and David Mills. They and colleagues have found that a particular strain of bacterium, a subspecies of Bifidobacterium longum, possesses a special suite of genes that enable it to thrive on the indigestible component of milk.

This subspecies is commonly found in the feces of breast-fed infants. It coats the lining of the infant’s intestine, protecting it from noxious bacteria.

Infants presumably acquire the special strain of bifido from their mothers, but strangely, it has not yet been detected in adults. “We’re all wondering where it hides out,” Dr. Mills said.

The indigestible substance that favors the bifido bacterium is a slew of complex sugars derived from lactose, the principal component of milk. The complex sugars consist of a lactose molecule on to which chains of other sugar units have been added. The human genome does not contain the necessary genes to break down the complex sugars, but the bifido subspecies does, the researchers say in a review of their progress in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk. Besides promoting growth of the bifido strain, they also serve as decoys for noxious bacteria that might attack the infant’s intestines. The sugars are very similar to those found on the surface of human cells, and are constructed in the breast by the same enzymes. Many toxic bacteria and viruses bind to human cells by docking with the surface sugars. But they will bind to the complex sugars in milk instead. “We think mothers have evolved to let this stuff flush through the infant,” Dr. Mills said.

Dr. German sees milk as “an astonishing product of evolution,” one which has been vigorously shaped by natural selection because it is so critical to the survival of both mother and child. “Everything in milk costs the mother — she is literally dissolving her own tissues to make it,” he said. From the infant’s perspective, it is born into a world full of hostile microbes, with an untrained immune system and lacking the caustic stomach acid which in adults kills most bacteria.

“We were astonished that milk had so much material that the infant couldn’t digest,” Dr. German said. “Finding that it selectively stimulates the growth of specific bacteria, which are in turn protective of the infant, let us see the genius of the strategy — mothers are recruiting another life-form to baby-sit their baby.”

The complex sugars are evidently a way of influencing the gut microflora, so they might in principle be used to help premature babies, or those born by cesarean, who do not immediately acquire the bifido strain. It has long been thought there was no source of the sugars other than human milk, but they have recently been detected in whey, a waste byproduct of cheesemaking. The three researchers plan to test the complex sugars for benefit in premature infants and in the elderly.

The proteins in milk also have special roles. One, called Alpha-lactalbumin, can attack tumor cells and those infected by viruses by restoring their lost ability to commit cell suicide. The protein, which accumulates when an infant is weaned, is also the signal for the breast to remodel itself back to normal state.

Such findings have made the three researchers keenly aware that every component of milk probably has a special role.

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PregnancyWeekly.com