Right, before I go any further, I have to tell you, that this method is a REAL kerfuffle. BUT, you only need to do it twice. Say once, when you are relaxed, have a bit of time( yeah, like when does that happen), say evening, 8pm. Then again the next day, say mid morning, or mid afternoon.
It may take a day or so, to see results, but generally the results are VERY significant, thus worth it.
It is basically manually expressing. Have you manually expressed before ? If not I will try and explain it in symplistic terms.
You will need a tiny cup, or small bottle, say the one I have from my medela pump, to catch any drops of milk. You will get some. Becasue basically it is a method of manually expressing, so you are supposed to get some milk.
It is based on treating the nipple like segments of an orange, and each segment gets stimulated.
Or think of the nipple like a clock. and you go around stimulating each, 5 mintes.
So, use your thumb and forefinger. put thumb on top of areola, where the brown part meets the pink of your breast. put it there at the number 12 on a clock. Now place your forefinger on the bottom half of your areola, where the outer part of your brown nipple, meets the pink part of your breast. Put the forefinger there, on the number 6. Now squeeze gently. and hold for the count of 2. release and do it agian. do it for as many times as you can be bothered, ideally 20.
Then you move round the clock, Thumb on number 11, finger on number 5.
so you do 6 o'clock, 5 to 5, 10 to 4, quarter to 3, you may like to change hands here and use the other hand, or swap thumb and forfinger.And you work your way round, all of the clock, as it were.
On some of the squeezes you will get drops of milk. on others you get nothing.do not fret.
It does take a bit of time. and it is a total pain. but it is very very effective.
Claire kedves , who is the Bf specialist at Kings college hospital, and is worldwide known as a secilaist, and also known as such on MN, gave me this advice, said to manuaaly stimulate and then to use an lectric pump, for a few minutes.
she says that if you do it twice, you will notice a signiciant difference within 24 hrs.
I know I have. I have done this 3 or 4 times, a few months ago, and noticed a significant difference.
There we go.
they do say that nothing stimulates supply, like a baby themselves. thats why they advocate putting baby onto that particular breast as much as poss. and they do say that pumping alone will not keep supply going.
but this method, is highly regarded, to actually stimulate supply 'MORE'/ further.
Hope it helps.
Let us know how you get on.