24 Hour Breastfeeding "Cure"

I was once again googling things to do with low milk supply and I came up with this: the 24 hour breastfeeding cure. The basic idea is that mom stays skin-to-skin in bed with baby for 24 hours and does nothing but breastfeed and relax. The skin-to-skin idea sounded good. We haven't done as much of that as we probably should because it's been sort of cold. I haven't wanted to be naked and I worried about this poor tiny baby with no body fat getting cold.

Oxytocin is the hormone associated with love and bonding. It's also important for breastfeeding (needed for milk ejection, although it doesn't seem to be associated with milk supply). Oxytocin levels can be boosted by massage or skin-to-skin contact with the baby. Naps apparently also increase oxytocin levels, which makes sense to me. I always feel like I have more milk after a good nap.

I'm taking domperidone, which should increase my levels of prolactin (hormone involved in production of milk duct tissue and in milk production), if those are low. Spending the day nursing the baby skin-to-skin should increase levels of oxytocin as well as cause bunches of nipple stimulation and stimulate milk production. It didn't seem like a bad idea.

I began the experiment by sleeping skin-to-skin with the baby on my chest for most of the night. Either the skin contact or the pressure of the baby did stimulate milk production because I leaked all over the sheets. That was a positive start.

I decided it was probably unrealistic to go from supplementing with 10-12oz of formula per day to entirely breastfeeding, so I gave the baby 2.5oz in the morning. Then, we started our skin-to-skin nursing project. She nursed pretty constantly for most of the afternoon. She didn't nap much, probably because she was vaguely hungry... but she didn't really get fussy very much either. I finally gave up and gave her more formula about 7pm. That was a block of about 10 hours that we exclusively breastfed. According to our baby app, I nursed for just over 5 hours yesterday (and I know there was nursing time that I didn't enter into the app just because I was tired of doing it). We only supplemented her with about 6oz of formula, down from 10-12 over the past week. She doesn't appear to have lost weight during the day yesterday, but it's hard to say because her weight fluctuated by a couple of ounces between the various times we weighed her. My conclusion from the experiment is that skin-to-skin and mega-nursing time during the day are very valuable for keeping my milk production up, but it wasn't a "cure" for anything.

The downside is that I didn't get anything done except nursing. Not that nursing isn't valuable, but I can't spend 24 hours (or even 12, which is about what I managed other than overnight time) skin-to-skin on a daily basis. There are things that I need to do.

My guess as to the  milk supply problem is that I don't have enough milk-producing breast tissue and I don't have a lot of room for milk storage. I'm basing this partly on the diagnosis of the lactation consultant and partly on the (voluminous) things I've googled on the subject. The lactation consultant said that women with breasts that "look like mine" often have trouble producing enough milk. I've googled it and there is a breast shape (often described as "tubular"; the technical term would be hypoplastic) for which this is true. Whether or not that applies to me is hard to say. Some of the descriptions fit, but some don't. It seems like a reasonable diagnosis based on the fact that I'm not producing enough milk. The breast tissue I have seems to be doing its best - I almost always have some milk and will reliably be able to pump a half-ounce if it's been an hour since I pumped or nursed. However, it's just not enough to fulfill the entire demand being placed upon it. If the baby nurses the whole day, I can get nearly enough milk into her because she's always getting the small amount that's being produced. However, I don't seem to be able to produce or store enough milk to entirely keep her supplied.

My new plan is to feed her on demand, then if she still seems hungry after she's nursed, give her 1oz of supplementation. If she's still hungry after that, she can nurse again, then we can do another 1oz from the bottle. That way, neither of us is getting too frustrated.