>I have a mom I'm working with who has a history of insufficient milk
>production. Her breasts are "udder" shaped, bowing to the outside. At 24
>days pp, baby extracted 12ccs from one breast and 18ccs from the other.  We
>had blood drawn for tests, and then started mom on galactogogues. Test
>results:
>
>T4, Thyroxine         result: 6.1    reference range: 4.8-12.8 ug/dl
>TSH, berum            result: 1.10   reference range: 0.3-5.7 miu/ml
>Prolactin (baseline)  result: 59.1   Ruth Lawrence range for days 10-90,
>60-110
>
>Prolactin is apparently at the bottom edge of Ruth's range, which concerns
>me some.


Knowing  almost zero  about prolactin measurements as I do, apart
from what I read, as we just don't measure this sorta stuff here, I
would still wonder about drawing any conclusions from measuring this
hormone in this way.

The tables I have seen show a whoosh of a rise in prolactin levels
actually during the time the baby is sucking, and then an only
slightly less dramatic fall off when the baby is not sucking. So the
baseline measurement is less than half the hormone story, surely??

(Not that I am suggesting that taking bloods while the baby is
actually feeding is necessarily a sensible thing to do....seems a lot
to put a mother through, though I suppose someone must have done it
to get the range of values in the Lawrence book.)

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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