one woman milk show

Is she really writing about breast milk? Yep, looks like it. I've never quite understood the whole demand supply process they "say" is the way your body works with making milk. I say nope. That's not at all how it works. At least not for me. With my first 3 kids I had to supplement with formula and with my first 2 babies I stopped making at 5 months. Now, feel free to NOT leave me comments with suggestions in them, I've tried it all, trust me. :) With Jett, I started out with TONS of extra milk, I was pumping after he nursed every time because his suck wasn't strong enough to get it all out, and he was so tiny, he didn't need a lot of milk. So I ended up with gallons of frozen milk in my freezer. Literally. To this day, Jett has not had one ounce of formula. Not that formula is bad, cuz it's not, I'm just proud to say that I feed him exclusively my milk. Then when he started sleeping through the night I noticed my milk went way down. I was hardly making enough to feed hm throughout the day. SO I went to a lactation specialist and she didn't say anything I hadn't heard before. She recommended pumping more, taking herbal supplements, eating more calories, drinking more water, eating oatmeal every day, drinking pineapple juice, and the list goes on. All things I've already tried. Then the suggested something that is a last resort, prescription meds. She recommended one called Reglan. It is an antacid medication that just so happens to have a side effect of raising your prolactin levels, making you produce more milk. It has some yucky side effects like anxiety and depression so they are very careful to prescribe it, especially to new moms who's hormones are already out of control. I wasn't going to do it at first, not waiting to risk the side effects. Then I talked to my best friend, the Pharmacist at the store, who knows me by name because I've to be on so may meds lately. He broke out his huge book of medications and read me the statistics on the side effects. The chances were basically slim to none that anything would happen. He told me to try it and if I don't like it, to just stop taking it. So I said okay. I started taking it and within two days I was making double or triple the amount of milk I was making. Here is what I'm doing:
I pump every two hours with a hospital grade pump and am getting between 4-6 ounces every time
I take More Milk Plus herbal supplements 4 times a day
I take the Reglan 3 times a day, with meals
I eat organic rolled oatmeal for breakfast every day
I drink about a gallon of water a day
I don't diet, I run every day, but am eating constantly throughout the day to make up for lost calories

This morning when I woke up I pumped 10 ounces folks!!! 10 ounces!! Its basically amazing. The meds work and I haven't felt any side effects. I have been doing this new thing for about 2 weeks.

I asked the lactation lady why in the world our bodies all do milk making differently. Why can't they just adjust to babies sleeping through the night and still make enough milk during the day? That would make sense...but no. She gave a very interesting answer, she said that every woman has her "magic number" of feeding that her body likes to have and if you go below that number your body says "nope, no more milk" So when your baby starts going 10 or 12 hours without feeding at night, you lose the amount of feedings your body needs to keep up milk production. And then it just needs a little help getting back up to where it should be. I guess it makes sense but I still don't like it. I still think that our bodies should just know what to do no matter what. But what ever. We do our best right?!?!?