Lactation Nation: Chronicles of Induced Lactation Post 1

Thank you to the lovely Nini for giving me this awesome series title, it makes me laugh every time I think of it!

OK.. So, as I have said several times, I planned on inducing lactation to breastfeed this baby. My goal is to exclusively breastfeed for AT LEAST ONE YEAR! This will include Christy pumping colostrum and breastmilk for us in addition to me pumping too. In order to induce lactation, I had to start on a medication protocol of progesterone (the same drug that is used to support a pregnancy such as crinone, pio shots, or in my case PROMETRIUM taken orally) AND a drug called Motilium or Domperidone. This medication is used to treat motion sickness, but was found that a side effect it had was causing lactation in women AND MEN. As soon as I was reasonably sure things were going to progress normally with the pregnancy, I jumped in there and started my pills.

 You start off on 1 Prometrium pill ideally at night (DO NOT take this during the day if you want to be able to function, OMG I learned that the hard way!) As well as 40 mg (4 pills) of Domperidone a day. After 7 days, you up the dosage of "Dom" to 80mg (8 pills a day). You are supposed to do this for AT LEAST 2 months, but ideally 6 months so you can have the full effect. Also you are not supposed to pump until approximately SIX WEEKS before baby is due. This plan would not work for me for several reasons.

1.   I have no patience
2.   My previous breastfeeding experiences were MORE THAN SUCCESSFUL, meaning I produced enough milk to feed a small village! (NOT KIDDING)
3. In the event I couldn't pump a full supply, I wanted to start stockpiling.
4. I have no patience (yeah, I know I said that already!)

So I started on the protocol and waited for the changes that are supposed to happen. (Your boobs grow about a cup size bigger AND become very tender all the time!!) I started noticing a tingling feeling approximately 1 to 2 DAYS in to meds.... Just for kicks, I tried to see if I could express a drop. To my surprise I got about 5! I was super excited! So excited in fact that I texted a pic of my drips on my fingers to Bobbie! (She is my official "Milk Buddy" since we are inducing lactation together!)

 She was very encouraging and that really pushed me to keep going. I love having a buddy to go through this part with! So then I noticed the cup size change about a week after that. I was anxious to try pumping but was scared I would mess something up. (After researching, I realized I couldn't mess anything up, as some women exclusively induce just by pumping) I would say about 2 to 3 weeks of meds later and I felt like I was going to BURST! I decided to give pumping a try. Now the actual pumping schedule is something like every 2-3hrs for 20 minutes at a time. I just wanted to casually pump when I had that painful full feeling. So on my first pumping session I didn't keep because I take a blood pressure medication for pre-hypertension and it is NOT baby friendly. So I had a few sessions of pump and dump (throwing the milk out! Yes this pained me beyond words!) So I decided to cold turkey stop my meds and ask my Dr. for a breastfeeding friendly bp medication. I waited about a week to 10 days of stopping my bp medication and then started gearing up to pump and KEEP! My first session of pumping to keep I produced this:

 That is about 2.5oz!!! Not a bad showing at all! I am sure you noticed one bottle has more. Apparently just like before, one side is going to be my slacker side and one side is going to be my overachiever side! The overachiever is ole righty! After this, there was no stopping me! I started pumping one time a day at night and drinking LOTS of water and juice during the day. I can tell when I have had lots to drink because I FEEL it almost immediately! I have also had to purchase a couple of nursing bras because the girls are not OK with being squished in to one of my regular cutie bras.. Annnywho, so I have been on my pump once a day schedule now for a couple of weeks and I continued to see progress:

This is about 3.5oz, so definitely building up a little bit of a supply! I decided NOT to pump yesterday because I didn't feel like it (LOL!) and I was feeling kind of blah and tired.. I slept terribly last night and had pains all night in the girls! By this morning I was dying from not pumping and super engorged, so I am at the point now that not doing it is no longer an option. Today when I got up, I immediately got my supplies and headed to my "pumping station" or my chaise in my reading spot in my room, LOL! When it was all over 15 minutes later I had this:

5.5oz= BOOYAH!

So far that is a record, but I am sure it was due to me not pumping at all yesterday. My norm for the day is about 3.5oz to 4oz, nowhere near the 28oz to 30oz a baby will drink per day (Thank you Med.ela for putting that info in the pump booklet!) So knowing this, that is part of the reason I wanted to get ahead of the game with pumping so as of today, this is my stockpile:

 Not a bad start, huh!? Most of these bags have 1.5oz-2oz in them with the more recent ones having 2.5oz to 3oz. I plan on having MANY of these bins full by the time baby makes his/her debut! I am a looong way off from 30oz a day, but I am hoping to be close to that by September or October! I will update on my progress along the way! Wish me luck!