Home Forums Induced Lactation aka Adoptive Breastfeeding Medical Interventions to Induce Lactation/Increase Milk Supply stopping supplements

My adoptive baby is a month old. I have been supplementing her with 1 to 2 ounces of frozen milk a day. She is gaining 8 to 10 ounces a week. I am going to stop supplementing and let my body increase supply to her demand. I am really excited about this and only a little bit nervous. Sometimes she acts like she is starving so I get out the supplementer and she only takes 5ml. That's 1/6 of an ounce.

Here we go!!!

It sounds like she is ready. She is gaining great and you should be able to make up the 1 to 2 oz pretty easily. I found when I stopped supplementing with the expressed milk, she would just nurse a little more frequently and my supply went up. Good luck.
Jennifer

sounds to me like she just wants the sucking longer.. Not necessarily that she needs more milk. I would stop the supplementing and just nurse your baby. As long as she has 8 to 10 wet diapers a day then your baby is doing fine.

The first 4 days without supplements went fine. No frustrated baby. I think my mood helped. Then Monday she had a "I am starving to death" period. I weighed her on Tuesday and she'd gained 2.5 ounces in 3 days. Every day since then she has had a hungry period. The last 2 days have been so bad I supplemented her. Yesterday she took 25cc. Today I didn't notice how much she took--less than yesterday--and after about 90 minutes I finally got a letdown and she guzzled so fast she nearly choked herself.

I will weigh her tomorrow to get a 1 week weight. I don't know what to do. Maybe increase dom to 150 mg a day (I'm on 120,) maybe do supplement, maybe let her just work at it (hopefully this will teach her persistence and not to resent me.) Maybe I...I just don't know what to do.

Any thoughts?

Lenore really took me to task for taking more than 120 mg. per day of Dom. How about supplementing her with a SNS or Lact-Aid to help up your supply?

Actually, that sounds a lot like my experience nursing my bio dd. At about 6 weeks, she had a big growth spurt, and wanted to nurse all the time. I didn't supplement, though - just let her nurse more, and after a couple of days, I was keeping up with her again. I wish I had known about fenugreek and blessed thistle then, though!

I think supplementing too quickly (and I'm not saying you were too quick, I'm just saying in general) is that then the breasts don't get the message that they need to up the supply. Maybe it is different with adoptive bf, though?

I went a whole week without supplementing and her being fussy at random times. One of them I pumped to see how much I really had--4ml total in one breast none in the other. She gained 6 ounces that week (though she hadn't pooped in a few days so I need to take that into account.) That's a fine weight gain except she had done more other weeks. I don't want to compromise her growth potential.

I'm going to weigh her at the end of this week and see how much difference there is. If she gains huge amounts, then I will consider just supplementing from now on. If her weight gain is around 6 ounces, then I'll back down on the supplementations.

I went up to 150mg based on what I read on Jack Newman's website.

Second I wouldn't get too obsessive about weighing her. If she is steadily gaining weight and has plenty of wet diapers in a day she is doing fine. Nurse her and if she is satisfied then it is all good. Or just supplement after one feeding a day. Is she nursing each time until she stops on her own?

Yes, she stops on her own, but sometimes if I don't supplement her she gets so frustrated. When she's frustrated, she eventually falls asleep the same as a child who is put in a crib and made to cry it out. She's crying for help and I can't give it to her. If it were only a couple days in a row, I could live with that, but when it's day after day it gets hard to watch.

She has ample wet diapers. I wish it was only 10 a day. We change her every time she's the least bit damp and we easily go through 15 to 20 cloth diapers a day.

It's not just adoptive. It's more of where I was in the natural weaning process. Before the baby came along, I'd gone from pumping 2 ounces in a sitting down to 1/2 an ounce. My body was preparing to stop the nursing process as my bio-son was getting older. I started on dom and that increased the amount I could pump, ,but I don't know that it changed the natural process towards weaning that was happening in my body.

I'm also trying to figure out the best way to deal with tandem nursing a toddler. If he gets to the milk before she does, she's out of luck. During the day I am finding I can often delay him by reading, but at night there's nothing I can do. However, nights usually aren't so bad as daytime for supply. I've only had to supplement once during the night because my son sucked "his side" dry and she didn't get enough from her side. Daytimes though. I guess the problem then is I can delay him if I know she wants to eat, but if I think she doesn't and let him nurse and then she wants to eat, I've got to supplement. But that's not the supplementing we've been talking about. What we talk about here is when he hasn't nursed for awhile and she just wants a few ml to an ounce to top off. And she acts like she is going to die.

Like I said, 4 days in a row without supplements she acted like she was starving.