contraceptives and milk

[hazlinh]

dunno if anyone's seen my thread on this in the Health section, decided to move to this section just to see if i get more responses> basically, I have noticed a decrease in milk production after switching to the combined pill abt 2-3 weeks ago from the mini-pill. dr claimed it would be alright after being on mini-pill for 3 months first, but thats obviously a fallacy!!anyway, he's given me Mercilon now (am currently on marvelon) and says that should clear up the problem. Any advice on what i shd do in the meantime (have resorted to mixed feeding during the day as I can't even express enough for one feed, only about 2 oz the whole day!!! but in the evening, the milk sorta comes in, esp if i've taken my fenugreek throughout the day so thats not such a big problem.any thoughts/opinions/experiences?

hazlinh - you can only be on a progesterone only pill when breastfeeding - any combined pill will reduce/stop you making breastmilk. Your doctor should know that. If you are not keen on that pill, what about the Mirena coil? It is very effective.

mears, what if i go back onto the mini-pill? i take my last combined pill today..shd i straightaway conitnue with the mini-pill? have obtained one pack. here, we just buy them from the pharmacist, no need for prescriptions. it's just that the dr was confident that a different type of combined wd yield better milk production so i believed him!

(am not too keen on any type of coil, am fearful of sticking things up you know where, and i heard it causes much bleeding...?)

should i start the minipill straightaway without a gap between it and the old combined pack?

Strange you were given the combined pill, hazlinh, as it is known to affect milk supply....do a websearch and you will get lots of hits about it.

Options: switch back to mini-pill? I don't know about the different formulations, but it's still a combined pill and the data sheet says not to breasfeed with it.

To build up your milk supply, feeding more often is the basic and unavoidable strategy. Expressing doesn't show you what the baby can get, so don't go by that.

Yes its true that the combined pill will affect your milk supply. It doesn't matter which brand or formulation you were given, its the oestrogen content that will affect the breast milk. I would advice you to hot foot it straight down to your local family planning clinic and get some more advice - which will probably change back to a progestogen-only method such as the mini-pill you were on before. In the meantime, keep trying to express or breast feed so your supply does not get affected further because as long as the demand is there, you will produce the milk, even if its not in great quanitities like before.

crap.

The mirena coil doesn't cause excess bleeding, in fact it causes less and some women have no periods on it at all. I can understand why you don't want to have something stuck in you, but it certainly doesn't affect bf - I fed my ds to 15 months with it.