I'm wondering if anyone has encountered a mom with a huge oversupply - in only one breast. I have a woman that I've been working with who has this problem, and is having a lot of trouble getting it under control. The other breast produces significantly less and has had no engorgement. She is unable to wear a bra because of the difference in size between her two breasts. She wasn't doing anything different with the larger breast feeding-wise - she'd been feeding from both breasts equally since the baby was born (5 weeks ago), but this one just took off into the stratosphere at about one week past birth.

She has tried starting feedings from the lower-producing breast and then using comfort pumping and engorgement management strategies to handle the discomfort in the larger breast, but that hasn't helped. She tried doing a "super" pumping of the larger breast, emptying it completely with the pump once and then trying to manage it with feeding, comfort pumping, cabbage, and cold packs, but it continues to become engorged within hours of the full empty. She's tried doing blocks of time feeding from the larger breast - up to 8 hours on the same breast - but her baby was miserable, or as she put it "drowning." When she comfort pumps, she pumps for less than five minutes, gets a significant amount of milk, and still does not have relief. She's gone up to 10 minutes with the same result of no relief.

She is currently eating peppermint altoids, and doesn't like the taste of sage tea, so she hasn't tried that.

To complicate things, her baby is showing signs of reflux, and her pediatrician wants to put him on medication.

Has anyone ever seen anything like this? And if so, did you find a way to resolve it? I looked through the archives, but didn't come across anything that dealt with this issue specifically.? Thanks for any input!

Peggy Healy, MS, IBCLC, RLC
The Art of Breastfeeding, Inc.
www.artofbreastfeeding.com


 


 




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