Termination Of Lactation With Folk Remedies

2024 Author: Josephine Shorter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-15 09:49

Termination of lactation with folk remedies

The first priority for all mothers is deciding when to wean. To begin with, a woman should be guided by her own well-being - both emotional and physical.

What is the best way to show your baby that breastfeeding is over? For a start, you can put on closed clothes and give your baby enough food so that he is full and does not ask for a breast. You should calmly explain to him that now you cannot ask for a breast; you can smear the nipples with lemon juice or something bitter (mustard or other products) several times. So the baby will understand that the breast is not tasty.

Typically, a child weaned from breastfeeding from a couple of days to a couple of months. You need to be prepared that at this time he will cry and be capricious, so you should feed and distract him in time. The most difficult thing is to wean the baby from night feeding: when the baby wakes up and cries, you need to give him milk, tea or water to drink. It is better to give a drink from a mug so that he weaned from the sucking reflex.

It often happens that after the baby has been weaned, milk still continues to flow and the breast stretches and hurts. In this case, you need to wear a tight bra without wires made of natural fabric until lactation has completely ceased. When the breast starts to hurt, milk can be removed with a breast pump. Thus, milk production will begin to stop after 3-5 days. These days, you should give up soups, tea, hot liquid food. You should try to drink less fluids until the milk burns out in the glands and the breasts become soft, without any lumps.

After completing lactation, you need to give up products that can restore milk production (especially beer) for a couple of months. You should not silently worry about painful sensations during milk burnout: in order to protect yourself from unnecessary worries, it is better to consult a mammologist. During the cessation of lactation, it is useful to drink soothing herbs (weaning the baby can be very stressed for mothers).

Content:

• Medicinal plants to stop lactation
• Can the chest be pulled?
• Advice

Medicinal plants to stop lactation

Mother's milk is a valuable source of nutrition for a baby from the very first days of life. Research shows that none of the existing artificial nutritional formulas can be a complete replacement for breast milk.

Yet despite this, in some cases it becomes necessary to stop lactation ahead of schedule: due to the state of health of the mother, due to lack of time, etc. To achieve this result, you can turn to a variety of methods. One of the most effective is taking specialized medications. However, medications are too radical and dangerous way to stop lactation. Therefore, the best solution would be to take phytotherapeutic agents.

Sage to stop lactation

Sage has long been firmly established as a means of stopping breast milk production relatively quickly and safely.

What are the benefits of sage as a lactation remedy?

If we talk about the benefits of sage over traditional medicines, the answer is obvious. Almost all specialized drugs for stopping lactation are based on sex hormones, or on inhibitors of the production of pituitary active substances. Intervention in the endocrine system is always unpredictable and can result in a mass of unpleasant and dangerous consequences, up to and including death. In addition, any of the special drugs is difficult for patients to tolerate, since it has many side effects: from a banal headache and dizziness, to bleeding and dysfunctions of organs and systems.

The drugs have a strictly limited scope and should be prescribed by specialists, and then only in those cases if it is necessary to urgently and radically stop the lactation process.

There are many folk remedies. But not all can be called safe. So, for example, pulling the breast with an elastic bandage, which was widespread earlier, is dangerous and can lead to mastitis or lactostasis.

Sage, on the other hand, has a relatively mild effect on the mother's body and does not cause sudden changes in hormonal levels, as well as does not contribute to the development of side reactions.

How does sage work on lactation?

The pituitary hormone prolactin is responsible for the production of breast milk. Its level directly depends on the concentration in the blood of the specific sex hormone estrogen. This is the basis of the effect of most hormonal drugs. However, in nature there is a substance analogous to estrogen - phytoestrogen. It, like estrogen, reduces the intensity of prolactin production, but unlike it, it does not affect hormonal levels. Another plus is that sage is not harmful to the baby, unlike drugs. Therefore, it can be applied while continuing to lactate.

How to take sage for lactation?

Among the recipes, the most popular and effective ones can be distinguished:

• Sage oil. The duration of admission is not determined exactly, you need to take the drug until lactation stops, but usually 2-4 days are enough. To achieve the maximum effect, you should take the drug several times a day (at least four), 3-5 drops. Sage oil is also useful for topical use. It will relieve inflammation of the mammary glands and prevent the development of lactostasis.
• Sage tea. For cooking, you need to take 1 cup of boiled water and add 1 teaspoon of sage herb to it. Then the infusion should settle for 60-90 minutes. Method of intake - 1/4 cup 4 times a day before meals.
• Herbal collection. Sage herb, hops (cones) and walnut leaves are used. Proportion: 1 teaspoon, 2 tablespoons, 1 teaspoon. The mixture is placed in a thermos and filled with 2 glasses of hot water. It is infused for 60-90 minutes. Then you need to let the infusion cool. 1/4 cup is taken 3 times a day. You need to store the infusion in the refrigerator.
• Sage broth. A teaspoon is filled with 2 cups of boiling water. The resulting broth is taken throughout the day. Divide the broth into 5-6 servings.
• Brewing packaged sage. Brewed like tea. It does not have such a pronounced effect, therefore it must be taken within a week - one and a half. Drink 1 glass a day, divided into portions.

Contraindications to the use of sage

There are a number of contraindications for taking sage:

• Allergy to sage.
• Pregnancy.
• Acute kidney disease.
• Diseases of the nervous system (epilepsy).

Also, caution should be exercised by persons with degenerative diseases of the gastrointestinal tract (ulcer, acute gastritis, etc.).

Peppermint to stop lactation

Peppermint is another effective remedy for stopping lactation.

This plant has a similar effect to sage, with the only exception that it acts directly on the mammary gland. The main active ingredient in peppermint is menthol. It is important to know in what dosage to take this drug, since a single intake of peppermint, but in a large dosage, can lead to the opposite effect: the cessation of lactation will be replaced by a more intense production of breast milk.

In addition, menthol, accumulating in the blood, is excreted from the body, including in breast milk. For children, this substance can be dangerous, therefore, from the beginning of the use of the phytotherapeutic agent, the child should not be applied to the breast. It is known that menthol has a pronounced hypotensive effect on children, can cause cardiac arrhythmias, etc.

The main and most popular peppermint recipe:

Two tablespoons of dry peppermint leaves are poured into two glasses of warm boiled water. Within 60-90 minutes, the product is infused. The infusion must be filtered. It is necessary to take the product 2-3 tablespoons at a time, 3-4 times during the day before the next meal. It makes no sense to cook peppermint infusion for future use, as it "spoils" very quickly.

Cabbage leaf

There is another popular recipe to reduce the production of breast milk. It should be noted that it is quite controversial, and its effectiveness is not 100% proven. The essence of the recipe is as follows.

The cabbage is broken down into individual leaves. A juicy cabbage leaf is rolled out a little with a rolling pin so that the juice comes to the surface. Then the sheet is applied to the mammary gland and fixed with gauze or a bandage (but it is necessary to exclude tightening). The cabbage compress must be kept until it wilts.

According to herbalists, this recipe is based on the healing effect of cabbage juice and is designed to "burn" milk. The recipe is not able to completely eliminate lactation, but it reduces the amount of breast milk.

Can the chest be pulled?

Literally 5-10 years ago, among ordinary people and even some doctors, it was widely believed that for a quick and safe cessation of lactation, one should tightly bandage the breast with an elastic bandage. Some people still believe that this method can help in stopping lactation.

It has been proven in practice that this method is not only ineffective, but also extremely dangerous for a woman's health. An elastic bandage or any other bandage that tightens the chest constricts the blood vessels that supply the mammary glands with oxygen and nutrients. Blood circulation in the area of the organ is disturbed. Moreover, the woman does not feel the amount of milk entering the breast.

The only thing that can be achieved using this "method" is milk stagnation and, as a result, lactostasis or much more dangerous mastitis.

For reference: lactostasis itself is not too dangerous. The maximum that threatens a woman with lactostasis is chest redness, pain and discomfort. But often lactostasis is fraught with dangerous consequences: the development of infected or uninfected mastitis, or an abscess.

With the formation of an abscess, there is a high probability of its self-opening and further infection of the adjacent tissues with possible necrotic process and sepsis. In 99% of cases, breast abscess requires surgical intervention in order to avoid negative consequences.

With uninfected mastitis (inflammation of the mammary gland), extremely painful symptoms develop: pain, changes in the shape of the breast, hyperthermia. Possible loss of breast function up to absolute. An even more severe consequence of pulling the chest with a bandage is infected mastitis, which can cause necrosis and removal of the breast.

Thus, it is best to refrain from dubious "old-fashioned ways" and think three times how to stop lactation in the safest way for yourself and the baby.

On the subject: How to properly wean a baby from breastfeeding in 5 steps? 8 mom mistakes

Advice

The termination of lactation, which means weaning the baby from the breast, is a great stress, both for the mother and for the child himself, both psychological and physiological.

To make the process of stopping lactation safe and least traumatic for both mother and baby, there are a few rules to follow:

• In no case should a baby be weaned off the breast suddenly and abruptly. This should be done gradually. To begin with, you should replace your daily meal. Instead of breast milk - formula. Morning feeding is followed by followed by evening feeding. Thus, breastfeeding remains only overnight, before bedtime. Each replacement must be carried out at least one week apart. Do not forget that the food that will be selected instead of breast milk should be at least as good in its properties (as close as possible to breast milk in its qualities).
• You can change the environment to make weaning an infant the least “painful” from a psychological point of view. You need to feed the child in another place, and you should also not change clothes with the child (the fact is that in the early stages of development, primarily developed and formed reflexes prevail, and since breastfeeding is almost always preceded by the changing of the mother, a strict reflex sequence is fixed in the child's mind).
• You can not wean the baby from the breast abruptly. In the early stages, the infant will almost certainly be worried and even scared. In this case, breast can be given to calm down. However, in the future, it is necessary to find another effective way to calm the child.
• Another effective way is to express breast milk in a feeding bottle with a nipple and offer it to the baby. The child will quickly understand that it is much easier to feed from a bottle, so he will no longer want to breastfeed.
• During the period of cessation of lactation and weaning of the baby from the mother's breast, the baby should not be left for a long time. This situation for the child is a huge stress, and the absence of a parent can become even more difficult for the child's psyche. If possible, you need to be with the child as long as possible, up to the stabilization of the psychological state.
• It is impossible to wean a child from natural feeding during a period of illness, after a given vaccination, or when a baby's teeth begin to cut.
• A situation is possible when weaning from the breast is simply impossible: the child is capricious, does not calm down for a long time. This means that the baby is not yet ready to give up breast, which means you need to wait a while and try later.
• Some time ago it was recommended to lubricate the nipples with something bitter (infusion of wormwood, brilliant green). This is a highly wrecking recommendation. Because, firstly, the mother will give herself uncomfortable sensations, and secondly, it will become even more severe stress for the child. Taking any action, you need to take into account the likely psychological reaction of the baby and your own comfort.
• To effectively reduce lactation, you need to take herbs or drugs (which is less preferable), drink less fluids. Expressing milk frequently and maintaining an optimal level of physical activity is important to reduce discomfort.

The author of the article: Lapikova Valentina Vladimirovna | Gynecologist, reproductologist

Education: Diploma in Obstetrics and Gynecology received at the Russian State Medical University of the Federal Agency for Healthcare and Social Development (2010). In 2013 completed postgraduate studies at N. N. N. I. Pirogova.