walkitout (walkitout) wrote,
walkitout
walkitout

tandem nursing TMI, oversupply, etc.

When last I shared A Little Too Much About My Breasts, the right one was starting to get engorged (I think this was last Sunday). The problem continues. Stool is no longer neon bright orange, so I'm now completely convinced that at least for A., the bright orange stool is just the bilirubin working its way out of her system. Both A. and T. remain able to latch and I haven't had to pump to keep the right boob functional, but it does get kind of uncomfortable. That, I was okay with, altho I talked a lot about icing it I didn't actually have ice on it very often. Today, however, A. had that boob, with the usual really crappy latch, choking, swallowing, gulping, blah, blah, bleeping, blah, and spewed up a really shocking amount of milk immediately after disconnecting. Not teaspoons. More like a quarter of a cup or so. I had to change my shirt, my pants, my underwear, her outfit. And we should probably change the sheets, too. That's not a foremilk/hindmilk problem. That's just too freaking much milk.

And I'd like to say, there are people out there who think oversupply is a result of bad latch. They are so completely full of it. In this particular case, it is extremely obvious to me that the oversupply is a result of tandem nursing a toddler who can completely suck that boob dry in a very small number of minutes. If left to his own devices (which I do not), he will knead that boob into making a bunch more, too, and finish that off. No wonder I'm having trouble.

So we've got some new rules: T. is not allowed to use his hands. He can't seem to stop himself, so I just immobilize them (martial arts technique to the rescue!). And when the breast has been completely softened, he gets turfed out whether he wants more or not. It's one thing to let him have what's there; it's wholly another to just let him ramp production even higher. There's no problem whatsoever with A. nursing after T. -- no choking, no gulping, latch looks good, etc. In general, I've been nursing her as often as possible on the other breast, to keep her from ramping production on the problematic side, altho I'm also trying to keep things from getting too engorged as well. It's a bit of a balance, which I am using ice packs actively now to help out with. I may resort to cabbage leaves next. Given that this is still a problem after 5 days, I'm not _too_ concerned about inadvertently annihilating supply entirely. Particularly since production on the other side is just fine, and the engorgement over there has been completely dealt with.
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