well...

....up till now I have always thought that for whatever reason it was my body let me down .

BUT, I have been in discussions on an internet forum I use with a breastfeeding counsellor.

This has led me to discuss things in more depth with Sharon and also to receive more insight from the online counsellor.

There are many many reasons why this could have happened. Because it happened to me doesn't necessarily mean that it could happen to you but these are the thoughts that Sharon had- hope it's allright to post it here but if it helps ONE other mother then its a good thing

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Sharon

that somehow your prolactin receptors had knocked off early for some reason - whether the contributory factors were your pn bleed, anaemia, your blood disorder thingey etc....who knows...but your milk cells were therefore not firing on all cylinders so to speak.

if this had happended to a primip i would have thought it was a low genetically determined lactational potential but as you bf so well 1st time this is deffo not the case

i have wondered if you have had some mild form of sheehan's syndrome. usually means complete absence of lactation due to a severe blood loss leading to pituitary malfunction = no lactational hormones. but maybe there can be degrees of it..... i don't actually know! so little research is done into bf issues

whether there was some disruption to pituitary function and then the sleepy baby thing contributed as the milk wasn't moved out of the breast often enough and the feedback inhibitor of lactation protein (FIL) built up & sent messages of we don't need milk to an already depleted cavalry of milk cells so even more of them shut up shop ......?

(the prolactin receptors on the milk cells kinda open for business after delivery of placenta in response to changes in hormone levels and are activated by high levels of circulating prolactin - this turns the milk cell on to milk production)

however for most mums the steps you took and hard work you put in to address the issue would have been enough to have reactivated the process - that it didn't leads me to believe there was more to it as above

Yes the wt loss was over 10% (10.9%) and this should have been picked up & managed proactively but for most health profs all they see is bf failure & mums that accept that - the hp rarely needs to think of bf solutions to bf problems - so if baby loses wt - give him formula etc. instead of improving bf manangment - attachment etc - the problem there of course is so many of them don't recognise poor attachment & do not know the bf management strategies
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