I ALMOST went and got myself some after the birth of my 2nd child.  I 
was REALLY miserable for about 3 days.  My older daughter was still 
nursing BUT was being babysat at her grandparents' house while I was 
being taken care of by a kindly friend (who actually let me wet-nurse 
her 4.5-mos old son a couple of times to help me out and it STILL didn't 
do any more than take the bare edge off my engorgement on the right 
side).  My newborn daughter was NOT managing to keep up with the supply 
in the left side (which I said was "her" side; the right being my older 
daughter's side) and it was feeling very full most of the time.  But the 
right side felt ready to explode.  I think if I had NOT been nursing my 
older daughter (who effectively emptied my right side as soon as we were 
back together) I would have explored the oral contraceptive route (or 
other combined hormonal contraceptives) to drop my supply.  I had bad 
oversupply with my older daughter and things were obviously worse with 
my younger except luckily the older one was nursing enough to make up 
for it.  I do know one person who had very severe oversupply and a 
couple of months after her daughter's birth she started taking the pill 
and it brought the milk supply down to a "tolerable level".  She never 
had problems with UNDERsupply and exclusively breastfed until she 
introduced solids somewhere around the middle of the first year and she 
nursed that child (while on the pill) until just past 3 years of age.

Now, I am still nursing both children, and given my younger daughter is 
over 2, I feel I have met the WHO recommendation and she is not relying 
on me as heavily for milk, and I was getting fed up with other birth 
control methods and not ready to commit to a #3, so I started hormonal 
contraceptives again just a week ago.  I opted for a Nuvaring though 
because I felt that since it was as low a dose of hormone as possible on 
the market right now, it might diminish supply less.  If I feel my 
supply dwindles too much and my younger daughter really needs the milk 
for whatever reason I might stop using it and go back to other methods. 
 But so far, so good...in 9 days of use I haven't noticed a significant 
drop.  It could come yet though...

Fio
Ressource person with Allaitement Québec
Mama to Sandrine, 5 in less than 2 weeks and Nyssa, 28 mos, tandem nursing.

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