When my fifth baby was born early and ended up spending some time in the NICU, we were faced with some feeding challenges right from the get-go. As a preemie, she wasn’t able to breastfeed and needed a feeding tube for her nutrition at first.
Having exclusively breastfed my other children, this unexpected twist really threw me for a loop, but I set myself to pumping my milk for her, even if I couldn’t feed her myself. As it turned out, I may have been a bit overzealous in my pumping, because I wound up filling up not one, not two, but three freezers in the NICU (each just a little smaller than an average refrigerator freezer) over the course of our week-long stay.
If you want to reduce your supply, or even stop breastfeeding altogether, you can’t just quit “cold turkey”
Upon discharge, although I was thrilled to be home with my daughter safe and sound, our feeding challenges followed us out of the hospital. She still wouldn’t nurse, even with a lactation consultant’s assistance, so I kept pumping. And pumping. And pumping. Before I knew it, I found myself with a huge oversupply of milk. I was also exhausted from constantly trying to pump and care for my daughter alone when my husband returned to work, and even more frustrating, I was facing round after round of crippling mastitis.
I knew that I had to take some steps to reduce my milk supply in order to stay healthy for my daughter, but when I searched online for information on what decreases your milk supply, I didn’t find a lot of answers. Understandably, most articles and advice available for moms talked about tips to increase milk supply, but there wasn’t a lot of information on how to decrease it.
The challenge of reducing your milk supply
As I soon found out, having too much breast milk—especially in the newborn stage—is not a common problem, so it can be difficult to find the resources you need to help you if you’re in the same situation. Ultimately, finding out what decreases your milk supply isn’t as easy as finding out how to increase it.
If you want to reduce your supply, or even stop breastfeeding altogether, you can’t just quit “cold turkey”—if you stop nursing or pumping suddenly, you run the risk of not only being in a lot of pain and discomfort but also having serious complications from mastitis.
I was in a bit of a pickle over reducing my supply for a few different reasons:
1) I didn’t want to dry up my milk completely.
2) I had to do it safely in order to continue feeding my daughter my pumped milk.
3) I had to be very careful because I was at a high risk for mastitis, since I had a history with it.
Because I have a long and complicated history of mastitis, and reducing your milk supply immediately puts you at risk for mastitis again, the first step I took was to work with both a lactation consultant and my OB as I went through the reduction process. We decided that I would start trying to reduce my breast milk while finishing up antibiotics from my latest bout of mastitis, because they would help me get through the reduction process and stay protected.
I can’t say if that’s the right choice for everyone, but I would recommend that you work closely with your care provider and a lactation consultant to make a plan and that you have someone to call if complications (like a fever, clogged duct, or infection) do occur.
Slowly space out feedings or pumping sessions
When I decided to reduce my milk supply, when my daughter was around two months old, I was pumping eight times per 24-hour period, or every three hours. To best fit our family’s schedule and let me get more sleep, my husband and I decided that the ultimate goal would be to cut my pumping sessions by half, down to four sessions per 24 hours.
Slashing my supply in half was not something that could happen safely overnight, however, so we came up with a formula to help make it happen and decided to slowly stretch the time between each session and drop one feeding week by week, as follows:
- Week 1: stretch to four hours between each session (this effectively eliminated two pumping sessions)
- Week 2: eliminate the 4 a.m. pumping session (yay for more sleep!)
- Week 3: eliminate the midnight pumping session (yay for even more sleep!)
- Week 4: keep a rough schedule of four pumps per day at 8 a.m., noon, 4 p.m., and 8 p.m.
The ultimate goal would be to cut my pumping sessions by half, down to four sessions per 24 hours.
Additional strategies
Obviously, my formula was not an exact science, and along with reducing the pumping sessions, I had to decrease my supply at the same time so I wouldn’t keep making the same amount of milk. So I took additional steps along the way to help reduce the overall amount of milk I was producing, all with the goal of avoiding clogged ducts and mastitis. Wondering what decreases your milk supply? Here’s some ideas:
- Cabbage leaves and ice packs. As comfort measures between pumping sessions and especially at night when I was focusing on stretching out my pumping intervals the longest, I relied on cabbage leaves and ice packs to alleviate pain and engorgement. Most of us have heard of cabbage leaves to reduce engorgement and inflammation, and although the research is mixed on how effective cabbage really is, there is some positive evidence that it helps—so I figured it was worth a shot. Ice packs and compresses have also been found to help decrease pain and engorgement, so I used those between sessions as well. To be honest, I didn’t really experience any discomfort, so they must have worked.
- Peppermint oil. Peppermint oil has long been one of those oils that breastfeeding women are cautioned against using liberally, in risk that it may reduce their milk supply, but unfortunately there is no clear evidence either way. What we do know however, is that peppermint oil is considered safe for nursing mothers in small amounts, so I figured it couldn’t hurt and was worth a shot, so I applied a drop or two to my breasts (not the nipples) every day I was reducing.
- Nasal decongestant. You will want to check with your care provider before taking any medication, but there is some evidence that a decongestant, such as Sudafed, can help reduce your milk supply. For example, a 2003 study in the British Journal of Clinical Medicine found that even one dose of pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in decongestants, “significantly reduced milk production.” For the first week, I took Sudafed under the recommendation and guidance of my doctor, then decreased the amount I was taking as my milk supply dropped.
- “No More Milk” tea. I’m convinced that this tea was key to me successfully reducing my milk in a gentle way—and by the end of the reduction process, I actually came to enjoy the taste of it too! I drank three to four hot cups per day, mixed with honey. The reason this tea works is because it contains sage and parsley, both herbs associated with anti-galactagogue properties.
In the end, my game plan to reduce my milk worked beautifully: After only a few weeks, I successfully managed to cut my milk supply in half. I went from pumping eight times per day to only four, a schedule I am still maintaining for my daughter, who is now four months old.
Thanks to being able to reduce my milk supply, I feel like I am able to enjoy the best of both worlds; even though she has been unable to breastfeed, my daughter gets the breast milk I had hoped to give her, and I have been able to steer clear of mastitis.
After only a few weeks, I successfully managed to cut my milk supply in half
Oh, and let’s be honest—the fact that my husband can now give her a bottle in the middle of the night and I can get more sleep is pretty awesome too.
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