Salty breast milk

[Heartburn888]

I have noticed my baby favours a particular Breast over another which has ended up with me having uneven Breasts

I have been actively trying to encourage him to feed from the smaller to stimulate the milk production more to even then out but he will only ever have a couple of gulps of milk then refuses.

So I tasted it and it’s really salty in comparison to the other one which is quite sweet

Why is this? And what can I do about this to make it more sweeter?

I haven’t been eating anything strongly flavoured just my usual diet. I have tried to ring the health visitor today but couldn’t get through and I didn’t want to leave a message saying I’d been tasting breast milk haha so I’ll keep trying to get through.

The milk in the salty boob does leak during most feeds, I have been trying to express from this one but I find I can only express a certain amount before I cannot get any more out or if I am able to it’s literally a drip.

Any advice on what I can do?

Can I ask how old baby is OP?

I had this with DS as a newborn (he's a November baby).

One breast was actually very salty tasting! The other very sweet. I had uneven breasts... then in the Summer, he preferred the salty one and they evened out. After that he's just been equally happy on either one.

Although the left one seems to do the best job at getting him to sleep.

All good anyway, still breastfeeding and he was 2 in November

Sounds like mastitis - the milk from the infected breast will taste salty due to the increased sodium and chloride content. It's weird, because you don't mention any other symptoms of mastitis - have you had any pain, tenderness, redness, temperature?

The other thing it could be is low supply - the natural salt gets diluted less because you're not making much milk on that side.

I have heard that pregnancy can cause salty breast milk too (presumably due to decreased supply) but that's usually on both sides.

100% not pregnant again

My baby is 1 month old.

I didn’t even think about mastitis as I’ve not had any symptoms, I do get a little bit of pain in it sometimes, the type of pain I get in my sweet boob just before it starts leaking (which is when I feed my baby) but it’s rare