What It’s Like To Be A Mom Who Produces Too Much Breastmilk

Before she gave birth to her first child, Brittany worried about not producing enough milk to feed her baby. But that ended up not being an issue with her first, who is now 4-and-a-half. Nor was it a problem with her 2.5-year-old or her 7-month-old. On the contrary, Brittany’s breasts practically overflowed with the stuff, like two small firehoses she couldn’t turn off. “My kids would all start choking,” explained the 31-year-old, who lives in Kansas. “They’d pull off and when it’s very forceful like that, it’s like a sprinkler going off. It’s like, ‘Get me a rag!’ You’re getting it all over them. They’re upset. You’re upset.” “Sometimes,” she said, “I just wanted to scream, what am I doing wrong?” In breastfeeding support groups and consultations between dazed new moms and lactation consultants, the words “supply problem” generally mean one thing: insufficient milk. Estimates suggest that between 30 and 80 percent of breastfeeding moms believe they’re unable to produce enough milk, whether or not that’s actually true. But for a smaller, often-overlooked subset of mothers, the problem isn’t making too little milk; it’s making too much of it. And while an abundance of milk may sound like a pretty damn good problem to have, mothers and lactation experts say it is actually extremely painful and emotionally grueling ― an ongo...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news