One mother who took fenugreek before we met, said she discontinued it
because of the baby's green stools.  In fact, the mother was troubled with
*oversupply*, not undersupply, and while I never really understood the
details of the events that prompted her to use fenugreek, she was a woman
who breast-*fed* - long intervals, no comfort nursing.

I wonder if the mother who wants fenugreek to boost her pumping ability in
fact has a full supply but because of her long-interval feeds, the fenugreek
put her baby into foremilk overload.

What finally broke the
almost-nursing-strike-from-spaced-feeds-and-oversupply crisis my client was
in was my umpteenth comment about more frequent casual nursing, but phrased
this way, "... or if you want to keep your baby quiet while you're on the
phone."  It was a light bulb for her.  "You know, it would never, never have
occurred to me to offer my breast just to keep him quiet while I was on the
phone.  I'm not at all unwilling to do it, but it would never have crossed
my mind."  She realized then that she still hadn't really given herself over
to freewheeling non-food-related nursing, and when she did so, her next
phone call to me was to tell me, "I love my baby!"

That's a meandering way of getting at a possibility - that the green-stooled
fenugreek babies may be those who are on the brink of green stools anyway,
and who have another management issue that may need to be addressed.  What
if the 30 minutes every 3 hours baby, for instance, began snacking instead?
Foremilk and hindmilk cease being an issue because there really *isn't* any
foremilk, the mother's supply becomes "accustomed" to frequent activity, and
perhaps she'll be busting her buttons to pump at work as a result, without
dumping foremilk while she's at home.  Just a thought.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY

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