at a homeschooling park day today i met a mom who had a question for me.
 this is her 3rd baby, her older two are 6 and 10.  baby is 8 weeks old,
and a chunky, obviously well fed, healthy baby.  with all three kids,
she has had an issue where her left breast produces almost no milk and
her right one produces a great deal.  when she was pumping with her
other children, her left breast would produce one ounce for every 4-5
ounces from her right breast.  the breasts are obviously lopsided.  she
doesn't remember any breast trauma.  two years ago (after the first two
had nursed sucessfully) she did have a biopsy on her left breast, under
the arm, and another one on her right breast, top right quadrant.  but
this was after she had successfully nursed two other children with this
same supply issue.  mom did say that sometimes the baby's poop is a bit
green, maybe 30% of the time, but the normal "nurse on one side for 3
hours" doesn't really work when she's already nursing on one side.  she
said that this time she worked extra hard to try to nurse the baby on
both sides equally, but the breasts are still not producing milk
equally.  i do realize that most women produce more milk in one breast
than in the other one (i produce more in my right breast, but i know
it's because i nurse more on that side, and in fact when my girls became
toddlers, i simply stopped nursing on my left breast completely).   but
this seems to be extreme.  i was able to, with the confines of trying to
do an assessment in a public place, confirm that baby is latching on
well.   mom does say that sometimes her one breast gets so full of milk
that the baby has a hard time latching on, but she knows when this is
happening and repositions the baby.

anyway, any ideas on how to help this mom increase the milk production
on the one side?

thanks

joylyn, who promises to get a new keyboard tomorrow--i've just been so busy.

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