In my limited experience, virtually every mother who continued nursing despite a low supply developed more milk.  Some "topped out" with a full supply eventually, some didn't.  But a side benefit not often discussed is that, in my experience, by nursing *this* baby, a mother helps ensure a still better supply for the *next* baby.

The low supply mom almost always has a substantial edge over the adoptive mother, who starts from scratch but nonetheless builds tissue.  Just nursing will mean - most likely - some increase in tissue for the low supply mom.  And it seems to me that, having built that additional tissue, she puts herself in the same category with most of us who see more milk the second time than the first time.

Among recent low supply moms having their second baby, one supplemented in a very minor way for perhaps 10 days and then was off and running.  Another did not achieve a full supply the second time either, but has much more milk than the first time.  Another is just starting out, and had a bad start that seriously dropped her milk supply in the first 2 weeks.  But her milk had "come in" with an abundance that she had never seen before, and she now knows what her potential this time is.  

Have others found that continued nursing can be, to a varying extent, a gift of milk that the first baby gives the second?

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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