How common is low supply?

[ILoveMyBabyBird]

From what I've read, it seems that chronic low supply is very rare, but I often wonder if it is true. I mean, there are still so many moms that choose not to breastfeed, so how do we know that there really is only 1% of us who cannot breastfeed. And is this 1% those that cannot have any supply or a full supply? I have been wondering this for a long time, anyone have info?

[Ruthla]

I suspect that perceived low supply is a lot more common than true low supply.

I'm also sure that many women who truly do have low supply could have prevented it with proper BF management and support (ie, their bodies didn'd "fail" but they were failed by medical profesionals, family members, etc.)

Of course, the women who need the most support and are least likely to get it are women with valid reasons to supplement but want to maintain the BF relationship. You can't make enough milk? Then give the baby however much you can and use formula to fill in the gaps. It's far too easy for women in that situation to end up using formula full time. Not everybody can challenge their doctors, MILs, etc at a time when they're already feeling vulnerable.

[foreverinbluejeans]

I think we have a good idea of how many women really don't have enough milk by looking at simplier societies and history. Women are born with two breasts and can breastfeed twins so it makes sense that women should be able to produce enough milk for two babies.

Women in the US do not make up a population of 'natural' women. Some of us may have died off due to survival of the fittest (I would have). Women have their breasts enlarged, reduced, and pierced. We wear bras from the time we have little nipple buds (do we know what that does to us?). There are chemicals in our food, the air we breath, and the stuff we put on our bodies.

We breastfeed wearing western clothes and usually at 2-3 hour intervals or longer. In simpler societies babies may nurse for several short periods in an hour. We have our babies closely spaced together. We have little support of other wormen. We drive cars with babies in car seats. We give babies bottles so fathers will share the feeding experience or so baby will get used to a bottle. We work and leave our babies in the care of others. We consider sleeping through the night a good thing.

We are told our breasts are for sex, for the pleasure of men. People get upset if you breastfeed in public. It is rare for a baby to be breastfeeding at all at 12 months, all babies should breastfeed at least 2 years.
We get pregnant while our babies are babies.

We let doctors give us drugs during labor and cut us open and take our babies out. We give birth in hospitals rather than our homes. We let medical people take our babies and put them in nurseries and give them bottles or pacifiers.

Yet, most women in the US breastfeed without significant difficulty. Despite all these factors, women can breastfeed without problems. AMAZING

[MaryJaneLouise]

Just laughing because this topic comes up so often.

Here's one of the latest discussions:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...ght=low+supply

[Iris' Mom]

I doubt there is any reason to assume that the proportion of people w/ low supply is any greater in the population of women who never try to BF than those who do try, except to the extent it includes say women who've had breast reductions and don't try b/c they know they can't, etc. So, I would guess the % is about the same within a few hundredths oe tenths of a percent. I have no idea what the % is though. Have you actually heard 1%, or does that just approximate your understanding of "very rare"?

[prettypixels]

I really don't think anyone knows, nor could they know. There's absolutely no way to tell when a woman says she stopped breastfeeding due to low supply, whether she had true low supply or just had a bump in the road and gave up, or whether she had low supply due to mismanagement.

As a low supply mom, I have to say I think it is more common than a lot of people believe. I do breastfeed, but my baby gets the majority of her food from formula. I had a natural birth, latched on within minutes of birth, nursed on demand, etc. My LC stipulates that maybe because I had bad latch at first that my supply was not stimulated correctly; but the truth is that most moms would be able to overcome that via pumping and nursing nonstop. I was not.

Most moms would not do what I've done to continue; they'd just give up. I know of several other moms personally who've gone through true supply issues in spite of trying their best to breastfeed. And I believe that if you wind up with low supply due to mismanagement, that is still low supply!

[Iris' Mom]

Originally Posted by prettypixels

As a low supply mom, I have to say I think it is more common than a lot of people believe. I do breastfeed, but my baby gets the majority of her food from formula. I had a natural birth, latched on within minutes of birth, nursed on demand, etc. My LC stipulates that maybe because I had bad latch at first that my supply was not stimulated correctly; but the truth is that most moms would be able to overcome that via pumping and nursing nonstop. I was not.

Most moms would not do what I've done to continue; they'd just give up. I know of several other moms personally who've gone through true supply issues in spite of trying their best to breastfeed. And I believe that if you wind up with low supply due to mismanagement, that is still low supply!

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[CathMac]

Originally Posted by ILoveMyBabyBird

From what I've read, it seems that chronic low supply is very rare, but I often wonder if it is true. ...

Low supply in what context? If you were a WOHM with an 8 1/2 to 9 hour workday (5 days a week) and you had a 1 1/2 hour commute alongside women with 2 or 3 hour commutes then --knowing the realities of supply and demand and the fact that even a good pump is a poor substitute for a baby--then your perspective on "true" low supply would be very different.

I try and advise as many pregnant moms and new moms with very young babies that have to return to work at 6 or 8 weeks post partum that they need to build a freezer stash and put an artificially high demand on their system to create an artificially high set point or "base line" supply. Keeping in mind that any pump they use is very likley to be less efficient at milk removal than their baby. I suspect that many are simply not receptive to this message because recovering from Labor and Delivery and taking care of a baby on top of whatever else they've got going on is usually more than enough to deal with, let alone trying to incorporate a pumping routine.

However, we are doing them a huge disservice and setting them up for failure if we don't get the word out.

I would suggest that for anyone who thinks low supply is more of an issue than it would have been in earlier decades (for women that were nursing) it has everything to do with the increased numbers of WOHMs. I think one of my biggest Lactivist accomlishments was giving information, support and Mother's Milk Tea to another mom on my train. She had to combination feed early on but she did continue to pump despite low output until her DC was about 6 months. She tells me she would have stopped much sooner if it weren't for me.
~Cath