Hi all! My LO is 4 days old and started feeding formula last night after trying to attempt BF for the first 3 days. My boobs are now hard and hot and my milk is starting to come in. I want to get rid of it as quickly and hopefully painlessly as possible. I ordered gel ice packs but what else should I be doing to get rid of my milk?
Posted Aug 27, 2020, 12:14 AM UTC
I used Sudafed and cabbage leaves! I took 12 hour Sudafed for a couple days and wrapped my breasts in cabbage leaves. I did not pump at all, only hand expressed every so often to relieve pressure or help massage out any hard spots. Took about a week for it all to go away, but I’d say by the 3rd or 4th day the discomfort was gone. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated it to be.
I EFF from birth and I had a ton of milk. I took a hot shower every evening and stand under it for 5 minutes massaging my breasts. It would get alot of that excess milk out but not so much that til produce more. I found it painful to express unless I was in the shower. Then it would just get really easy. Then if it's bad in the day I would wrap an ice pack in a towel and lay down with my breasts on it. I wore a cotton sports bra. But not too tight. And then lay down with them on the ice towel.
This is basically what I did. Hand express in the shower to alleviate the pain but not to empty - that will just encourage more milk. Hot showers helped a ton.
Sudafed
BUT you had to get the one from the back with the pharmacists (if you’re in the US) because it has ephedrine which is what helps w suppression but people also use it to make meth at home
So all the Sudafed in the aisles have a different ingredient that won’t help with milk suppression
Also just to clarify, cabbage leaves may help relieve the pain and tenderness, but don’t actually do anything for milk suppression
Lots and lots of ice packs! I wrapped my breast in fresh ice packs for days! In the shower I would hand express just enough to relief the hardness of the breasts, but not empty them. Also super supportive bra or in my case I doubled up on sports bras and would wear a sports bra to bed. And keep wearing nursing pads for leaking.
It took awhile for my milk to fully dry up, but once I got past that first stage of incoming milk and I would just leak and not get full and hard it was easy to manage with just nursing pads.
Your brain produces a hormone that tells your body to produce milk. The production stops when your brain realizes that it no longer needs to produce that hormone. How long that takes can vary depending on each person individually.
Tight bra, strong sage tea (tastes yucky but helps), no warm water on your boobs when you shower. Your gynecologist may also be able to prescribe medication to support the process, depending on what is approved in your country.
Do you have a pump at all? My supply dried up pretty painlessly because I was pumping but not often enough. It’s a supply and demand thing so I would think if you expressed or pumped to get the milk out but didn’t empty them and only pumped like every 6 hours or something your body will just produce less and less and eventually you can stop pumping and just deal with the leakage for a few days. Not sure if that’s a route you’re interested in. I know people take Sudafed to dry it up and/or put cabbage leaves in their bras. Not sure if that doesn’t come with any discomfort or not. My milk was completely dry after 4 weeks and that’s with me pumping for the first two weeks and pretty much giving up on week 3.