Infant Feeding - Increasing Milk Supply

Skin to Skin Contact once your baby is stable, helps to steady baby’s heart rate and breathing and keeps them snug and warm. Skin-to-skin contact helps babies grow, reduces their stress levels and is the perfect way to soothe and calm them after a medical procedure. Skin-to-skin contact will also calm you, which can help if you have had a busy or stressful day. Spending lots of time in skin-to-skin contact with your baby has been shown to shorten hospital stay and increase milk production.

Stay close to your baby when expressing, the breastpumps are mobile and be moved to the babys cotside, exchange the cloth hearts provided so baby is comforted by your smell and your body will relax smelling your baby, releasing oxytocin and helping with your let down process and increasing milk supply. Privacy screens can be provided.

Look after yourself - stay hydrated, eat well and get rest when you can

Increase the frequency of expressing - try hand expressing before and after pumping. Try and drain the breast as much as possible to increase milk production. Hand expressing at the end after pumping will also help to collect higher fat milk.

Check that expressing is comfortable. Have you got the correct size of funnel, we have various sizes on the unit.

Double pumping. Saves time and also increases your milk supply

Talk to the nurses and midwives If you are worried about the amount you are expressing at any time and we can arrange for our infant feeding team to catch up with you on the unit