Placenta pills causing low milk supply?

[Shlomi]

Hi all:

My baby (my first) was born 3.5 weeks ago and my milk has yet to come in fully.

I had an unmedicated home birth. Baby latched immediately. We spent 10 days in bed skin to skin nursing on demand. We did EvErYThINg you are "supposed" to do based on the breastfeeding research but baby never gained back birth weight.

After 2 weeks, saw an LC who determined that issue is low milk supply, not baby's suck, tongue tie, or anything behavioral. So i spent the next week on fenugreek, goatsrue, go-lacta, extra pumping, and sns. Retained placenta very unlikely bc no symptoms and had placenta encapsulated so the placenta was inspected carefully. I have zero history of health or fertility problems and my pregnancy was totally uncomplicated. 

I finally saw an MD lactation specialist today and she is stumped too. She said rhat based in my breasts, insufficient glandular tissue is highly unlikely. She is going to try to rule out thyroid and high testosterone (I had a cyst on one ovary during preg) but she doubted those causes too. The ONE idea she had is that I took placenta pills. She said that they seem to help many women, but that in recent years she has seen several women with inexplicable low supply and the only common theme was placenta pills. I should say that she is very open to alternative therapy and actually herself researches homeopathics so this is not a knee jerk reaction against placenta pills, home birth, etc. 

have you or anyone you know had a similar experience? 

Rant: I cannot believe how poor the medical evidence is on human lactation!!!!! Unbelievable.

thanks in advance.....

J

[womenswisdom]

Actually, yes, I have heard this as anecdotal evidence before. Are you still taking them now?

[Shlomi]

I went off them 5-6 days at at midwife's suggestion. Have seen a very slight increase in supply but hard to know what to attribute that to...

[skycheattraffic]

This is just a guess but it makes sense intuitively to me that placenta pills may affect milk supply. From what I remember reading, the delivery of the placenta triggers the shift in hormones that causes lactation to initiate so ingesting the placenta could potentially affect the balance. Again, this is a complete guess by a layperson but since hormonal birth control has a range of effects on different women's supplies, I find it plausible that you may be one woman adversely affected by the placenta pills. Since placenta encapsulation isn't a mainstream practice, very little is studied about it and it may well be that there's a strong link that simply hasn't been found yet.