As the days of childbirth get closer, mothers are beginning to worry that there is not enough milk for their babies to drink after childbirth. What if you don’t drink enough? These are common problems for prenatal mothers. Mothers know that breastfeeding can provide almost perfect nutrition for their babies, which can not be replaced by any other nutrients. Let’s learn with questions, starting with breast milk.

How does breast milk come into being?

Breast milk secretion has two stages:

First of all, milk does not come after the baby is born. During pregnancy, the mother will secrete milk. The first stage of lactation is probably completed in the second trimester, when the breast gradually develops lactation capacity. This can be said to be the mother’s preparation for the baby’s food rations in advance! uuuuuuuuuu

The second stage of lactation occurs 3 to 4 days after delivery. Progesterone, which inhibits lactation, decreases rapidly and prolactin begins to play a role. The baby is hungry, and the mother secretes a lot of milk.

Milk is produced in this way:

Infant sucking stimulates the mother’s papillary nerve. Nerve impulses are transmitted to the spinal cord and hypothalamus along the spinal nerve, acting on the pituitary gland to release prolactin in the anterior lobe and oxytocin in the posterior lobe. The former binds to prolactin receptors in mammary epithelial cells to stimulate cell synthesis and secretion of milk, while the latter binds to oxytocin receptors in mammary myoepithelial cells to contract and increase intraductal pressure so that the milk is discharged.

Why is there insufficient breast milk?

First of all, the amount of milk excretion is the same as that of infants. The demand of infants is breast sucking as a messenger. If there is no local stimulation of breast sucking, the neurohypophysis system will not be stimulated and the secretion of milk will be insufficient. Therefore, in the breast-feeding stage, any factors that reduce sucking, such as fewer sucking babies, breast retention, psychological disorders of mothers, will lead to insufficient breast milk for mothers.

How to produce more breast milk?

Breast secretion is accomplished by stimulating the pituitary gland in the mother’s brain through baby sucking. That is to say, whether there is milk or not, there is not much milk, in fact, it is not decided by the breast, the mother’s brain is the master switch of milk secretion! So what can we do to produce more milk?

Three tips for breast-feeding:

1. More sucking: Mothers want the brain to send out lactation signals, the most effective way is to let the baby suck more times, milk production is based on the supply-demand relationship, that is to say, the more the baby sucks in the right way, the more milk it produces. Moreover, for mothers, feeding more times a day is more conducive to breast secretion than feeding more time each time.

2. Empty breasts: When a pregnant woman breastfeeds her baby later, she must pay attention to: every time she has finished feeding her baby, she should empty both sides of her breasts with her hands or a sucker, and do not think about leaving the milk for the next feeding. Just said, the brain is the master switch of lactation, when you always have milk in your breast, the brain will think that “baby can not eat, there is no need to continue lactation”. Empty the breast in time, let the brain know that the baby needs, the next secretion of milk will be more.

3. Confidence: Every mother should be confident. Mothers should constantly say to themselves, “I have milk”, so that the lactation signal in the brain will be stronger. On the contrary, suspicion and fear will affect the normal lactation of the mother, and the lactation of a distracted mother is irregular. As for the cultivation of breast-feeding confidence, pregnant mothers can start from now on oh!

Breast milk also contains a large number of immune active substances, such as the main lactoferrin of immune core protein in breast milk, which contains more than 300 mg/L, and even more in colostrum, helping babies to establish their own resistance system. With high resistance, babies naturally grow healthier, so mothers must insist on breastfeeding. To get enough milk, babies and mothers need to work together to give the brain a strong lactation signal.

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