Although I am now breastfeeding my third child, I am just now looking into oversupply, and overactive letdown as reasons for why my baby is so fussy. I have always known that I had no problem producing enough milk for my babies. My first two kids were nice, chubby babies, and I have never been able to relate to women that don’t have enough. Although, I am fully aware that this is a real problem for many Moms. But, did you know that too much milk can also be a serious problem too? I didn’t, until recently, and honestly, it is hard to find a lot of information on the subject.
However, too much milk, and overactive letdown (which usually go hand in hand) can actually cause symptoms in your baby similar to colic and food allergies. What?? It’s true. With my second child, I cut out dairy and soy from my diet due to symptoms like blood in the stool, mucousy green bowel movements, gassiness, and fussiness. The symptoms were all symptoms of a dairy allergy, so I quickly cut dairy and soy out of my diet for a full 14 months. This time around when my third started exhibiting the same signs, I groaned and thought, “Oh no. I’m going to have to do this all over again.” Yet, in my research this time, I ran across some information about too much milk causing the exact. same. symptoms! So, I leapt for joy. OK, not literally, but I felt like it. Maybe I wouldn’t have to cut it out after all?
While I still haven’t fully solved the mystery in my baby, and we are still exploring food issues, acid reflux, and colic, I talked to a Mom through a message board this weekend who swears that she was able to overcome all of her yucky poops in her twins and get them back to normal bowel movements just by doing a little tweaking with her milk supply. Since she has twins, what works for her will be a little different than what works for the average Mom with one child. However, she also thought her twins had food allergies, and realized after many weeks of working on her supply, that she was able to correct those yucky bowel movements and get them back to normal ones. She has done this over and over as they have grown and are now 6 months old.
Check out Part II of this article tomorrow!
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