A woman I know, after giving birth to her third child (she was 41) told me she quit nursing her baby after a few months–apparently either he had a healthy appetite or her body wasn’t producing enough milk. (He wound up having to use Enfamil, and has long since gone off it to solid food.)
What causes this–after a certain age (or number of children) does a woman not lactate as much or as frequently?
AFAIK, this can happen for unknown reasons, at any age, even on a first child. I don’t think it’s any more likely for an older woman, although I could be wrong.
Arjuna34
WAG, from personal observations:
The first time around, breast-feeding is absolutely FASCINATING. The new mom eats, sleeps, and breathes breast-feeding. She buys books, goes to La Leche League meetings religiously, watches her diet with extra vigilance to be sure no Bad Stuff like antihistamines gets into the breast milk, and, needless to say, talks about it constantly. She takes a peculiar pride in nursing in a public place, ostentatiously placing the baby under a shawl and proudly feeding it “milk that she made herself”.
The second time around, it’s a little stale. By the third or fourth time, you’d be amazed how quick that kid is on Enfamil.
Also, a nursing mom has to consume an extra, oh, two or three thousand calories a day to produce that milk. In actual observed practice, this amounts to lots of extra helpings of pasta, bagels, etc. And, of course, as long as you’re eating like a lumberjack, you’re never gonna lose that 30 pounds you gained when you were pregnant. This also gets old fast, on subsequent outings.
AFAIK, there’s no connection between being an older mom and a lack of milk. The milk is produced by specially modified glands which change blood into milk, so as long as your blood circulation is OK (which I guess it would be if you were still walking around), the mammary glands continue to produce milk.
What does change in older moms is their energy levels. With Kid #3 you by definition also have Kid #1 and Kid #2 underfoot (unless you waited 5 years in between babies), and sometimes it’s just easier to stick a bottle in Kid #3’s mouth, than to sit there and patiently nurse him for 20 minutes (a baby can gulp down a bottle in half the time it takes him to get the same amount of milk out of a breast–the rubber bottle nipple has a bigger opening.)
So your friend could have had any one or a combination of these things.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
On my first child, I thought maybe he had a massive appetite. Well, he did. He was on solid food (hamburger no less) by three months of age, and the doctor saw his full diaper and accepted it - he was fine. With the second child, however, I got annoyed with breastfeeding. Yes, it’s cheap - you feed yourself more, but food costs less than formula. It’s also highly inconvenient. Sometimes it’s painful (we got thrush, which isn’t usually too painful, but can be, especially for the child), sometimes it’s just annoying. How can I do other things if I’m busy with both hands and my chest with this baby? He also eats breastmilk more often than formula, which means you’re constantly feeding that open mouth.
I love my children, and I breastfed while I could, so as to make sure he got as much as I could handle giving him. But he’s on formula now (he’s five months old), and he’s none the worse for wear. In fact, he’s eating babyfood too.
So yes, mothers can run out of milk, but more often (MUCH more often), it’s a matter of giving up. If you don’t feed almost constantly, your body stops producing as much of the milk hormone - which leads to less milk, which leads to less feeding. It’s a cycle. The only way to break it is to constantly suckle, as if they were in a growth spurt. This, incidentally, does get painful - suckling an empty breast can hurt. Feels like the breast is going to be sucked inside out. Most mothers who produce less and get into that cycle wind up on formula - for one thing it’s too much of a pain to fix, and for another, they usually weren’t all that enamoured of it anyway (frequently having done it before).
-Elthia
Usually, nothing is wrong with the mother’s supply. The problem is that the baby is going through a growth spurt (usually at 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months or 9 months) and the mother has no support and does not understand this. The people around her who are anal about knowing how much the baby is eating even though they can see very well that the baby is growing and is healthy convince her that she isn’t making enough milk. Instead of supplementing with formula the mom should be letting the baby nurse all s/he wants so that her supply will adjust. Nursing is all based on supply and demand. Instead the baby gets formula supplements and the artificial baby milk is so hard to digest that the baby doesn’t get hungry when they would have, so doesn’t want to nurse, so mom’s body doesn’t know it needs to make more milk, so the baby gets more formula, and so on. Before they know it the milk is gone and they think it was that their body couldn’t make any.
True supply problems are very rare. They include a woman that has had poorly done breast reduction surgery, a condition that a small number of women are born with that leaves them with tube shaped breasts and poor “plumbing” (these women can still breast feed but often need to supplement), an interruption in the breastfeeding relationship (another supply and demand issue), and a very small number of medications most of which are not needed long term. Also EXTREME stress. But we’re talking extreme. My father died, my husband was in another state, we were trying to sell the house, we were moving 4 times as far away from my recently widowed mother, and of course I had just had a new baby and I still had milk. I still do and she’s about to turn 2.
There is also a phenomenon caused by women eating lots of sage in their holiday turkey, dressing, and gravy and peppermint both of which will cause a temporary drying effect on the milk. Most women know nothing about this and when their supply starts drying up they think something is wrong rather than that they have eaten a large amount of drying herbs.
I tried breast feeding…couldn’t do it, hated it, so Greg went on the bottle (he was about 2 weeks old). It took a long time to dry up (we’re talking weeks here). I asked my doctor for the shot that would dry me up but she told me that you have to get that shot pretty much immediately after birth.
So if I have another baby I’m getting that shot!
MaryAnn
I’m into superstition, black cats, and voodoo dolls (<—written in case Ricky reads this board)
It might have helped if I had included in the OP this information: The woman’s other two children were born in September 1976 (son) and July 1985 (daughter). The third baby was born in 1995; and all were illegitimate. The mother has erratic and outlandish eating habits, and until I lost the use of my car she was constantly mooching off me for fast food and such (she lives about 8 miles away from me); she would never go to a supermarket to stock her pantry. (A doctor we both know tried to hint that I might be the baby’s father; I answered, a bit testily, that if she wanted to ascertain that I would be moroe than happy to submit to a doctor’s [state-of-the-art] paternity tests. The doctor promptly dropped the subject.)
My sister is working on her R.D. and told me that basically a lactating woman can live off of Twinkies and Coke and her milk would be the same (nutrient-wise) as a woman (like me) who ate a very balanced and healthy diet. The difference is: twinkie/coke mom might lose her teeth. (Lactation pulls nutrients out of mom’s body first. If mom doesn’t replenish those nutrients, she loses them and suffers the consequences.)
I agree totally with SoMoMom about supply and demand. My son is 5 months old. I started back to work when he was 2.5 months old. My supply has decreased since I returned to work (even though I pump, pump, pump).
Another factor that might contribute to a waning milk supply is the return of the menstrual cycle.
And I do have to say, that in my opinion, it is much easier to breastfeed than mix formula and warm it. My son breastfeeds much faster than he sucks a bottle. Also, I can go anywhere and not worry about forgetting a bottle or running out of formula. And I disagree that all first-time nursing mothers are obsessed with breastfeeding. I just now (last week) attended my first La Leche League meeting because of supply problems and my son’s allergies. There are very few lactation consultants in my area, and LLL has been very helpful.