Lopsided boobs and low milk supply... Help!

[Elisianna]

A little while back I made a post asking whether the milk supply on my right side would be affected because at night I just nurse on my left side as Lucie sleeps to my left and I just roll on my side to feed her and doze. Most said it shouldn't be affected and so I carried on.

Recently my boobs have become very clearly lopsided. It looks really really obvious. My right breast used to be very full in the morning and that one side alone was enough to fill her up in the morning. Now it doesn't get full and it doesn't fill her up.

Over the past week or two it has been getting worse and worse. I noticed I was lopsided and started trying to feed her more on the right breast and always offer it first for feedings, but most of the time she screams and pushes it away. She will sometimes suck for a second or two and then be hysterical (but will calm right down on the left). The only time she takes the right is when she wants to suck for a nap and isn't interested in eating.

What can I do to rectify the situation? We rented a pump that I started using today but I don't even know if it will work, how long it will take to increase production, exactly how I should go about the whole thing anyway.

Please help!!

 

[SarahBear]

I would have been able to tell you this would happen... what you need to do is switch boobs. What you can do is start on the left and get your boob down to a good size, but don't let Lucie fill up and don't let your boob get too small. Then let her finish off on the right side. She might get frustrated with less milk, but when she sucks, she stimulates the breast to produce milk, even if it has been emptied. Alternatively, if she's going to empty the breast and still be hungry, you can empty the breast and then switch sides. A more extreme approach would be to only nurse on the right side or to do one of the previous examples alternated with a right side only feed. The basic message is, tell your body that the left side doesn't need to produce so much and the right side needs to catch up. I have had to rectify lopsidedness a couple times. You don't need a pump or anything like that. You just need to balance out your boob usage. Actually, I'd throw off the lopsided usage to the other side and THEN balance out usage. Good luck! Oh, and it can be useful to figure out how to nurse both sides while keeping the baby on the same side of you.

 

[Zephram]

My LO went through a phase of preferring my left boob too, not sure why. I ended up looking a bit lopsided too, but I have been able to rectify this pretty easily. What I did was basically what SarahBear said, I started on the left and then switched to the right once I felt my let down, so the milk was flowing and LO wouldn't get frustrated. He would then drain the right boob and switch back to the left to finish off. Probably took about a week to even up and LO has gotten over his preference for my left breast.

 

[Elisianna]

Thanks so much to both of you! I will do what you suggest!