Having enough breast milk is a good thing as it’s an assurance that your newborn will never get short on much-needed nutrients. However, it’s a completely different story if your breasts are producing lots and lots of breast milk.
There are a few complications associated with having excessive amounts of breast milk, such as:
- Breasts that feel painful or throbbing
- Constantly leaking breasts
- Increased risk or recurrent mastitis — inflammation of the breast tissue
Having lots of breast milk is not really a serious problem. But if it’s causing one or all of the above-mentioned complications, it’s a good idea to take certain steps that can help reduce the amount of milk that your breasts are producing.
So without further ado, let’s check out some of the things that you may do to decrease your breast milk supply effectively:
Apply Cold Compress
Especially if excessive breast milk production is already causing pain or discomfort, it’s a wonderful idea for you to apply a cold compress — we all know that it is something that can temporarily alleviate aches and pains.
Aside from dealing with the symptoms, a cold compress can help in considerably reducing breast milk.
You can deal with both excessive breast milk generation and the sheer discomfort it brings with the help of cabbage leaves straight from the chiller, a cold gel pack or an ice pack. Just remember to limit your use of a cold compress to 15 to 20 minutes at a time.
Use Well-Fitting Bras
It can be very tempting to bind your breasts if they are producing tons of breast milk in order to put leakage under control as well as to make your breasts look smaller.
Sadly, health authorities say that this is a step that you should avoid taking at all costs — binding can cause impaired blood circulation to the breasts, clogging of the milk ducts, and increased risk of winding up with painful mastitis.
Instead of binding, it’s a much better idea for you to put on a pair of well-fitting supportive bras. A lot of women swear by using bras that are a little bigger in size than normal for optimum comfort and support.
Avoid Pumping
If you think that pumping is the smartest move to make in order to deal with excessive production of breast milk, better think again — reaching for that breast pump to extract too much breast milk from your breasts can make matters worse.
Here’s how it works: the more you remove breast milk with a breast pump, the more breast milk your breasts create.
Got this urge to use that breast pump? Just remember to extract a small amount of breast milk at a time only. This can help minimize leakage, but it’s not going to eliminate the problem completely.
Take Herbal Teas
Fortunately, there are certain herbal teas that you may consume if your breasts are generating more breast milk than they should — these herbal teas are being recommended by herbalists and holistic healers to moms whose breast milk production is simply excessive.
Some of the breast milk-reducing herbal teas that you may take are peppermint, jasmine, sage, lemon balm, parsley, cheek weed, oregano and yarrow.
Just see to it that you do not drink any of the above-mentioned herbal teas in excessive amounts to avoid risking running out of breast milk for your little one. For your safety and that of your newborn, ask your obstetrician or pediatrician about the intake of breast milk-reducing herbal teas.
Have you heard or read about other ways to reduce breast milk production? Don’t be too shy to share it in the comments section below so that moms whose breasts are generating more breast milk than needed may give them a try.
