i apologise if this turns into an essay, but...
"Supply equals demand"
or
(worse) "low milk supply is actually quite rare so probably not your problem"
I've just read yet another MN thread where someone said the 2nd one (basically suggesting that a poster with suspected low milk supply probably wasn't in the "tiny tiny" %age of women who don't produce enough milk). It fucks me right off to keep reading this nonsense on here and other breastfeeding support groups/forums because it makes women feel like their actions or perception of low milk supply are the cause... rather than a genuine medical issue which might never be fixed. If a man had erectile dysfunction caused by a non-mental health issue, would we tell him that the problem wasn't a real problem if only he'd try the right thing, mentally?
Personally, this is (obviously) an upsetting issue. I'm 2 months PP and have low milk supply; as in, I produce about 5ml per 1hr pumping session, and I can get about 30ml on an entire day's worth of hours and hours of being hooked up to a pump inbetween breastfeeds.
My baby was delivered and within 48hrs lost so much weight he was admitted into NICU for monitoring. He was shrieking with hunger when he wasn't latched on, whcih was hours and hours of every day - i got about 3hrs of sleep in the first three days of his life, after which i was pretty much told he was in such a risky position we HAD to start supplementing with formula. My baby was literally starving.
- I'm on domperidone to increase milk supply (dr is talking about stopping it now as it has had no affect).
- I've spent every day of his life on a double hospital grade pump.
- Oatmeal breakfasts, flapjacks to inrease milk. I feel sick thinking about oats these days i'm so sick of them.
- I've taken fistfuls and handfuls of supplements every day: goat's rue to develop milk ducts, fenugreek, brewer's yeast, you name it, for 2 solid months.
- I've tackled slow let down by doing extreme skin to skin kangaroo style care the last few weeks; I listen to relaxing music whilst feeding and pumping, smelling my baby and looking at him/pictures of him.
His latch has been checked. No tongue tie.
- I've done about 4 feeding "resets" where I sat in bed and did nothing but skin to skin and feed for 3 days straight while my boyfriend and mum ran around doing everything else.
- i've had other stuff like bottle feed technique checked at my local LLL group, as well as the health visitor.
- GP has checked my thyroid and prolactin levels twice now - all normal.
- We've done a weighted feed at the local support group but i'm simply not producing anywhere near normal levels of breastmilk.
There's NOTHING i can do now to ever exclusively breastfeed as intended. i simply don't produce enough milk for some reason.
... and yet i keep reading on here especially that "low milk supply is rare" (no scientific source or attributation, of course!) and "supply=demand", just like all the other lies i was told at the antenatal group about breastfeeing.
can i ask you to consider the impact on women like me the next time you are writing something like that?
by washing over what is a genuinely distressing problem as if it weren't a real problem, it doesn't contribute towards good maternal mental health and suggests it can be fixed.
sometimes, it can't.
and now i'm trying to accept that it's ok. but then i read BF support threads on here with misleading / ambiguous phrases like that and i struggle.