Drying Up Milk

I honestly never thought that quitting breastfeeding would be such a hassle. Especially because I planned it out SO well and dragged it out for 4-5 weeks before I completely threw in the towel. Well, it's been 8.5 days since I stopped all together and I am in more pain that I was this time last week (and, I thought that was bad!!).

I finally called the Lactation Department at Northside Hospital a short while ago just to get some advice. Here is what the consultant had to say:

One, I have sort of screwed things up by expressing some milk - even though it's literally been just a few drops a day, that's actually enough to send a signal to my body to start re-producing milk again. It's as though my body is saying, "OK, I see what you are doing...you REALLY don't want to stop, so I am going to help you out and make more milk." The second thing is that it isn't helping matters that Katie is a snuggler. As ridiculous as that sounds, the fact that she likes to lay her head on my chest at certain times, makes my body want to produce milk. It's just like how when she was a newborn, all I had to do was hear her cry, and the milk would "let down".

I'm looking at another 2-2.5 weeks before the milk is completely dried up, so I'm headed to the store shortly to stock up on more cabbage leaves and Tylenol/Advil. In addition, I'm going to start using cold compresses as much as I can. She said this, out of everything, really helped ease the pain for her daughter.

Oh, what a woman goes through to have a baby...