How it all began

I first learned that I had overabundant milk supply and overactive letdown when I was trying to nurse my first baby.  Boy, can first babies be humbling!  I learned a lot from Hannah -- and a lot of it was how little I actually knew. 

Breastfeeding classes encouraged me to nurse my baby fully on both sides -- 15 minutes, 10 at the very least.  Have her empty both sides. 

Hannah would nurse for 3 minutes or so and be done.  I'd encourage her to get back on, and she would scream and tense and scream some more.  I felt terrible, as if my baby was going to die of malnutrition because she wasn't getting enough milk. Never mind that she was back up at birthweight by her 3 day checkup and never looked back.  I'd been told how much she needed to nurse to get enough. Seeing the scale go up didn't get through to me.  I attribute this to lack of sleep and abundance of hormones, besides being entrusted with a new baby.

See the Lansinoh in the background? 

I would spend the first minutes of our nursing time praying that she'd fall asleep before letdown, because if she did, she'd nurse fully and well.  If she didn't, she'd pop off and scream.  I'd latch her on and anxiously wait to see her eyelashes slowly lowering...darn, letdown came too fast. 

By three months old, besides all of the other breastfeeding problems we endured, Hannah had enough.  She refused to nurse.  She wouldn't take a bottle.  She was unconcerned about the idea of malnutrition, she just didn't want to deal with the huge quantities of milk shot at her whenever she ate.  So began our 6 months of getting her to sleep and then nursing her.  Humbling doesn't begin to describe this experience.

I can't remember exactly when I learned about overabundant milk supply and overactive letdown, but I do remember the sense of relief -- I finally knew what was happening.  Of course, I could find almost no information about it anywhere -- my health care professionals didn't know much, nor did anyone else I approached.  There was lots of information about too little milk, but not a lot about too much.  It was a lonely, lonely time.

I have scratched the surface of our nursing problems in those early days. I'll talk about mastitis, plugged ducts, enormous cracks in the nipple, and thrush in other posts. Looking back, I think how miraculous it is that I didn't give up.  I'd like to share some of my hard-won knowledge about this with others so that we don't all have to reinvent the wheel, and so that others know that they're not alone with this difficulty.