Hi everyone welcome back, this week we're going to be talking about relactation
a lot of lactation consultants have been getting inquiries over the last several
weeks from families who are interested in restarting their lactation journey
if you regret having stopped breastfeeding sooner than you would have
liked and you're interested in learning about relactating, stay tuned to this
video where we're going to learn about tips and tricks for increasing your milk
supply and welcoming baby back to the breast. I'm so glad that you're here,
please make sure you subscribe to my channel down below where you'll find the
most up-to-date lactation information and make sure you hit the bell so you're
notified every Tuesday evening when I post a new video my name is Kassi Reyes
I am a registered nurse, international board certified lactation consultant and
I've worked with thousands of families to help them get their breastfeeding
journey off to a good start and now it's your turn
there are several challenges that can come up at the beginning of
breastfeeding that can either be very discouraging for the breastfeeding
parent or can make breastfeeding seem nearly impossible to continue, whatever
your reason is, there are a variety of reasons that families stop breastfeeding, but
if you're regretting that or just wanting to give it a second chance and
see if you can start trying to relactate, then this is the video for you one of
the first things that you want to establish is what are your goals for
relactating? Some people are just missing the bonding feeling of
breastfeeding some people are more leaning towards wanting to give the baby
nutrition some people are leaning towards wanting to get back to exclusive
breastfeeding while others are more interested in just doing one or two
feeds a day while continuing to bottle-feed another goal could be that
you want to increase milk supply and continue to bottle feed your Pumped
breast milk to your baby many families report that they feel a
feeling of success just with increased bonding from the process of relaxation
so it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to set goals for volumes of milk
you know what's right for your family you know what's right for your baby and
you know what's right for where you are physically mentally, emotionally
so determine what your goals are and make them manageable goals and this is
going to lead to you feeling more successful as you take on this process
of relactation. Once you've determined your why and your goals
the next key is to realize that this process does take commitment pumping and
stimulating the breasts regularly is rough. This process could take up to 6 to
8 weeks if you're looking to really reestablish your milk supply you've gone
up to 12 weeks sometimes so I really do recommend that if you're looking into
starting relactation that you work alongside a board certified
lactation consultant who can kind of help guide you and give you
encouragement and kind of help you get started out on the right path. So what's
your why? Why are you here? What has led you to consider
relactation at this point in your journey of parenthood share down
below if you feel comfortable sharing with us. It's super interesting for me to
see how you ended up here and to see what is leading you towards
relactation. so what's one of the most challenging things about starting
lactation again is probably the regular amount of stimulation that is required
to try to increase the milk supply. We've talked about prolactin a little bit in
our last video / actually I don't think we mentioned prolactin yet we talked
about oxytocin in our previous video. Prolactin is a hormone that is
responsible for milk production and increasing supply, o every time that we
stimulate the breast we see the level of prolactin in the body double. So it's
really important when we're trying to establish a milk supply that we maintain
those prolactin levels in the body high and consistent throughout the day. We're
aiming for eight to 12 times a day for about 20 minutes
if baby isn't latching at this point you may need to do this regular stimulation
via hand expression or a pump often a hospital-grade pump can be really
helpful in getting the process restarted. A hospital-grade pump is the
strongest version of an electrical breast pump that you can use, it's very
helpful in establishing a strong milk supply and this is what we often use in
the case of parent and baby separation. remember regular stimulation is super
important as you're trying to up your milk supply pumping is tough, so give
yourself a little reward when you're meeting your goals maybe your goal is to
pump eight times a day and you're currently doing six maybe if
you go one week with meeting your goal, that first week you give yourself a
reward, whatever you decide that is or maybe you
give yourself a little reward or a little treat each time that you sit down
to pump throughout the day Galactagogues. What is a Galactagogue?
Galactagogue... that's a funny word huh? Galactagogues are substances, foods
herbs that have been known to increase breast milk supply and a lot of people
are interested in learning about Galactagogues.
I get asked frequently about what to eat or supplements to take in order to
increase milk supply. On this video my plan is not to get into the nitty-gritty
of Galactagogues however if you have heard of foods that do increase milk supply
such as oatmeal flax seeds any whole foods that you've heard about that can
be helpful I encourage you to take any of these foods if they make you feel
healthy and you're not allergic to them there is no harm in taking these and
helping you feel like your nutrition is contributing to your success on this
journey as far as buying special cookies or teas or smoothies for increasing milk
supply I would kind of warn against that, just because they can be quite expensive
and there's no there's not a lot of research that shows that those kind of
products are extremely helpful and increasing milk supply the regular
stimulation that we talked about earlier is one of the key things that you need
to work on there are a few supplements that have some
research behind them and we can dive deeper into that in another video on
galactagogues and milk supply but we're not gonna dive into all of that right
now as far as medications go there are medications that can be prescribed by
either a nurse practitioner or a doctor that can help you to increase milk
supply depending on your region of the world it's going to depend on which of
those medications are available for this purpose so I would work closely with
your OB or your lactation consultant or your Midwife to get any of your
questions about prescription medications for increasing milk supply answers all
right so now that we've covered the basics on establishing a strong milk
supply and the importance of regular stimulation we are going to talk about
getting baby back to the breast so this can be one of the most challenging
pieces of this relactation process the baby might start to get frustrated from
a lack of supply in the beginning so if the flow just isn't fast and as quick as
what baby may have been accustomed to with a bottle, you may find there is some
initial frustration the most important thing that you can do is not force the
baby. If baby says no or seems to be protesting at all while attempting to
latch then accept that no and move on. the main reason that we don't want to
force a baby at the breast once the baby seems to be saying no or giving us any
sort of struggle during latching is that we can cause an aversion. If you feel
like a little bit of this has already happened and
perhaps you suspect that your baby has a little bit of an aversion to going to
the breasts we are going to discuss some techniques that can help encourage the
baby to feel at ease some things that you can do to get baby reacquainted up
the breasts are skin-to-skin skin-to-skin is not just about having
the end goal of getting a latch, skin to skin is great for bonding and
building trust in the parent baby relationship
another thing is bathing together so just taking a long relaxing bath, infant
massage is another great way and a great tool for bonding and getting baby to
relax all of these are great ways to create trust and bond between the parent
and the infant and can help encourage baby feeling at ease while coming back
another technique for bringing a baby who has a potential aversion to coming
to the breast is doing a bottle feed close to the breast the parent should be
bare chested and baby down to skin to skin down to the diaper and then you
just do a bottle feed close to the chest so baby associate this feeling of
skin-to-skin and being close to the chest with feeding we can do a little
bit of direct supplementation at the breast with either a pumped breast milk
or formula and what that looks like is just having baby latch well you set up
either a supplemental nursing system or tube and syringe at the breast and feed
baby through a little tiny feeding tube that's placed in the corner of the
baby's mouth while you are working on maintaining a latch and working on
building up the milk supply and lastly another tool that can be really helpful
is called a nipple shield, a nipple shield is a little silicone tool that can be
placed over the nipple to encourage baby to come back to latching. The nipple
shield feels a little more firm and the baby's mouth a little bit more similar
to what baby has been doing with bottle feeding if you are thinking of doing the
nipple shield or some of the tube and syringe feeding, I also highly
encourage you to do this with the guidance of a lactation consultant.
What would a feeding look like when you are trying to bring baby back to breast
and have been mostly doing bottle feeding with either Pumped milk or
formula? One way that ..or one technique that tends to work is to give baby the
volume that they've been eating at each feed and lower the volume by about 10
mL at the end of a feeding and then putting baby to breast to finish the
feeding. As this goes on for a couple of days or as baby seems to be tolerating
you can begin to lower the initial bottle feed by about 10 mL every two to
three days, increase slowly over time the amount of the actual feeding that's
happening directly at the breast and I did mention some lactation tools in this
video if you're wondering what any of these are we will be doing a video in
more detail about different tools to assist in breastfeeding and lactation
but this is what a nipple shield looks like and this is actually placed over a
nipple like this to help a baby breastfeed it's actually that is not the
proper technique that I just showed you we will actually go over proper
technique for placing a nipple shield and sizing a nipple shield in another
video and as far as the feeding tube goes this is
what a feeding tube would look like. One end would be attached to a syringe or
going into a bottle and the other and would be placed in the corner of baby's
mouth like this when baby is latched on the breast. The suction would then in
turn pull milk into the baby's mouth giving them a quicker flow which would
encourage them to continue feeding, giving them a little bit more reward for their
effort. It can be difficult for a lactating parent to trust their body to
produce enough for their baby after having done bottle feeds and seeing the
volume that baby's getting, so as a reminder breastfed babies do eat about
eight to twelve times a day they may eat more frequently as they are adjusting
back to breastfeeding. As long as you're going back to the basics, seeing a
happy relaxed baby after feeds, feedings are happening about eight to 12 times a
day, we're seeing the expected amount of wet and dirty diapers and not seeing any
signs of dehydration and as you're following up with your pediatrician you
are seeing baby stay on their growth curve then just trust that your body is
providing for your baby. And...You can do this! So as you can see relaxation is
definitely a commitment and it takes time, but i want to remind
all those families out there who are starting out on this journey that you
are never a failure, that every family's breast feeding, chest feeding and
lactation journey looks different, if you're able to increase any amount of
human milk that your baby is getting or increase the bonding and closeness that
you feel with your baby then the journey was worth it. I hope that you enjoyed
this video and we will see you next time. My goal is to build a little bit of
sense of community with this channel so please subscribe if you like the content
of the video and join the conversation down below let us know how your journey
is going, If any of these tips and tricks you learned in this video were helpful
please share with our community so we can all work together and and see what's
working and what's not working for each of you. If you like this video and you
want more like it make sure you check out this video that we did on the basics
of breastfeeding and make sure you subscribe down below and hit the bell so
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