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The first priority for all mothers is to decide when to wean a baby. To begin with, a woman should be guided by her own well-being – both emotional and physical.
What is the best way to show a child that breastfeeding is over? For starters, you can put on closed clothes and give the baby enough food so that he is saturated and does not ask for a breast. You should calmly explain to him that now you can’t ask for breasts; you can smear the nipples several times with lemon juice or something bitter (mustard or other products). So the baby will understand that the breast is tasteless.
Usually the 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 act up, so you should feed him in time and distract him. The most difficult thing is to wean a child 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 is weaned, the milk still continues to come, and the chest is stretched and hurts. In this case, you need to wear a tight, pitted bra made of natural fabric until lactation completely stops. When the breasts begin to hurt, the milk can be removed with a breast pump. Thus, milk production will begin to stop after 3-5 days. These days it is worth giving up soups, tea, hot liquid food. You should try to drink less liquid until the milk burns out in the glands, and the chest becomes soft, without any seals.
After the end of 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 the pain during the burnout of milk: 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 a child from the breast, mothers can experience severe stress).
Medicinal plants to stop lactation
Mother’s milk is a valuable nutritional source for a child from the very first days of life. Studies show that none of the currently existing artificial formulas is capable of becoming a full-fledged replacement for breast milk.
Nevertheless, despite this, in some cases there is a need to stop lactation ahead of time: 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 drugs. 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 entrenched as a means to relatively quickly and safely stop the production of breast milk.
What are the benefits of sage as a remedy for lactation?
If we talk about the benefits of sage over traditional medicines, the answer is obvious. Almost all specialized preparations 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 host of unpleasant and dangerous consequences, even death. In addition, any of the special preparations is difficult for patients to tolerate, since it has many side effects: from a banal headache and dizziness, to bleeding and dysfunction of organs and systems.
The drugs have a strictly limited scope and should be prescribed by specialists, and then only in cases where it is necessary to urgently and radically stop the lactation process.
There are many folk remedies. But not everything can be called safe. So, for example, tightening 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, nor does it contribute to the development of adverse reactions.
How does sage affect lactation?
The pituitary hormone prolactin is responsible for the production of breast milk. Its level directly depends on the concentration of the specific sex hormone estrogen in the blood. 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 the hormonal background. Another plus is that sage is not harmful to the baby, unlike drugs. Therefore, it can be used while continuing lactation.
How to take sage for lactation?
Among the recipes are the most popular and effective:
Sage oil. The duration of admission is not precisely defined, you need to take the remedy until the end of lactation, 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 external use. It will relieve inflammation of the mammary glands and prevent the development of lactostasis.
Sage tea. To prepare, you need to take 1 cup of boiled water and add 1 teaspoon of sage herb to it. Then the infusion should stand for 60-90 minutes. How to take – 1/4 cup 4 times a day before meals.
Herbal collection. Sage grass, 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 cups of hot water. Infused for 60-90 minutes. Then you need to let the infusion cool down. Taken 1/4 cup 3 times a day. Store the infusion in the refrigerator.
A decoction of sage. A teaspoon is poured with 2 cups of boiling water. The resulting decoction is taken throughout the day. It is necessary to divide the broth into 5-6 servings.
Brewing packaged sage. Brewed like tea. It does not have such a pronounced effect, so you need to take it for 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 to 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 at what dosage to take this drug, since a single dose of peppermint, but in a large dosage, can lead to the opposite effect: the cessation of lactation will be replaced by a more intensive production of breast milk.
In addition, menthol, accumulating in the blood, leaves the body, including with breast milk. For children, this substance can be dangerous, therefore, from the beginning of the use of a phytotherapeutic agent, a child should not be applied to the chest. It is known that menthol has a pronounced hypotensive effect on children, it can cause heart rhythm disturbances, etc.
The basic and most popular peppermint recipe is:
Two tablespoons of dry peppermint leaves are poured over two glasses of warm boiled water. Within 60-90 minutes, the remedy is infused. The infusion must be filtered. It is necessary to take the remedy 2-3 tablespoons at a time, 3-4 times during the day before the next meal. It makes no sense to prepare an infusion of peppermint for future use, since it “spoils” very quickly.
cabbage leaf
There is another folk recipe designed to reduce the production of mother’s milk. It should be noted that it is rather controversial, and its effectiveness has not been 100% proven. The essence of the recipe is as follows.
Cabbage is disassembled 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 superimposed on the mammary gland and fixed with gauze or a bandage (but it is necessary to exclude tightening). A cabbage leaf compress must be stored until it wilts.
According to herbalists, this recipe is based on the healing effect of cabbage juice and is designed to “burn” milk. The prescription is unable to completely eliminate lactation, but reduces the amount of breast milk.
Is it possible to tighten the chest?
Literally 5-10 years ago, among ordinary people and even some doctors, it was widely believed that in order to quickly and safely stop lactation, the chest should be tightly bandaged with an elastic bandage. Some are still convinced that this method can help in stopping lactation.
The only thing that can be achieved using a similar “method” is milk stagnation and, as a result, lactostasis or much more dangerous mastitis.
For your information: lactostasis itself is not too dangerous. The maximum that threatens a woman with lactostasis is breast redness, pain and discomfort. But often lactostasis is fraught with dangerous consequences: the development of an 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 adjacent tissues with a possible necrotic process and sepsis. In 99% of cases, a 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. Loss of functions of the mammary gland up to the absolute is possible. An even more severe consequence of pulling the breast with a bandage is infected mastitis, which can cause necrosis and removal of the mammary gland.
Thus, it is best to refrain from dubious “grandfather’s ways” and think three times how to stop lactation in the safest way for yourself and the baby.
Tips
The cessation 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 cessation of lactation safe and least traumatic for both the mother and the baby, several rules should be followed:
In no case should a baby be weaned from the breast abruptly and simultaneously. This must be done gradually. To begin with, you should replace the daily meal. Formula instead of breast milk. Next, morning feeding is replaced and only then evening feeding. Thus, breastfeeding remains only at night, before bedtime. Each replacement must be carried out at least one week apart. Do not forget that the nutrition that will be selected instead of breast milk should be at least no worse in its properties (as close as possible to breast milk in terms of its qualities).
To make weaning an infant less “painful” from a psychological point of view, you can change the environment. You need to feed the child in a different place, you should also not change clothes in front of the child (the fact is that in the early stages of development, primary developed and formed reflexes predominate, and since breastfeeding is almost always preceded by dressing the mother, a strict reflex sequence is fixed in the mind of the child).
You can not wean the baby from the breast abruptly. In the early stages, the baby will almost certainly be anxious and even frightened. In this case, breastfeeding can be given to soothe. However, in the future, it is necessary to find another effective way to calm the child.
Another effective way is to express breast milk into a feeding bottle with a nipple and offer to the baby. The baby will quickly learn 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 child 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 stay with the child for as long as possible, up to the stabilization of the psychological state.
From natural feeding of the child can not be weaned during the period of illness, after the vaccine was delivered or when the baby’s teeth begin to cut.
A situation is possible when weaning from the breast is simply impossible: the child is naughty, does not calm down for a long time. This means that the baby is not yet ready to give up the breast, which means that you need to wait a while and try later.
Some time ago, it was recommended to lubricate the nipples with something bitter (an infusion of wormwood, greenery). This is an extremely “wrecking” recommendation. Because, firstly, the mother will give herself uncomfortable sensations, and secondly, it will become even more severe stress for the child. When 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. To reduce discomfort, it is important to express milk frequently and maintain an optimal level of physical activity.