Discover why massaging your breasts helps milk supply.

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Here, we discuss how a breast massage can benefit breast feeding and demonstrate some methods that you can use in order to release the oxytocin hormone and get you mentally and physically prepared for breast pumping.

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So, breast massage is a useful tool when it comes to pumping and breastfeeding. It helps us to mentally and emotionally prepare for breast feeding, we might be somebody who hasn't touched our breasts very much before we were pregnant, we're not in a culture where that's something we regularly do, and we know that when mums do touch their breasts in late pregnancy and when baby's arrived, it can help them feel a bit more confident about breastfeeding overall. Breast massage can also help us physically prepare for pumping and breastfeeding.

So, when we're stroking the breast we're going to be stimulating blood flow and that can help with increasing the hormonal release. We need that oxytocin hormone to arrive in the breasts to help contract and help make the milk flow more easily.

When you do breast massage there isn't one way of doing it you'll, develop your own personal techniques. Most people combine a technique of stroking around the outside of the breast where the milk producing areas are, with stroking down towards the nipple. 
Some people might do a little bit of nipple stimulation as well, we know that can also help with the oxytocin release. Some people will do with one hand don't forget to go underneath where some of those milk producing areas are, some people might want to do breast massage with both hands.

We're not doing it for a really long time five to ten minutes before your pump will be fine, that shouldn't be too short to actually get enough of the active stuff happening and you can continue doing massage while you're pumping as well.

So if you're using the Opti flow insert, for example, which you can buy as a separate accessory or it might come with your Ardo pump the optic flow insert is 26 millimetres but it needs to go in the 31 millimetre shell if you are doing pumping with the Opti flow insert, you can put your fingers between the Opti flow and the breast shell so you're not breaking the seal, you're still able to pump, but you're doing a little bit of massage while you're pumping, or if that's a bit too fiddly just carry on massaging around the outside of the breast. 
When you're finished pumping you may carry on doing some massage in combination with hand expression to help you just get a little bit more of that high fat content milk out.

Massage is also often used when mums are worried about blocked ducts, if you have a particularly firm area in the breast, you might do some more localised massage in that area and you might use something like an electric toothbrush as well just to help break up any kinds of blocked ducts in your breast, but overall massage is something that's just going to help us make breastfeeding a bit more effective and particularly is going to help with the pumping output.

As I said doesn't have to take a long time, you might be somebody that only needs to do two or three minutes just see what feels right for you, but it's a good idea to add it into your regime; helps us mentally get ready for pumping and helps us physically as well.

YouTube url:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoD6UBSb4c
Created:	17. 7. 2021 08:53:58

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Discover why massaging your breasts helps milk supply.