Not sure how quickly your breasts fill back up with milk after you pump or nurse? Here’s what you should know about how quickly milk replenishes after breastfeeding.
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When is breast milk replenished?
All the time, even while you’re pumping or nursing.
Your breasts are constantly making milk, so it’s never possible to completely empty them. One analogy is that breast milk production is like a sink with the water running – even as water is going down the drain, more water is coming in. So even if you kept pumping or nursing around the clock, milk would still flow out as it’s produced.
This means that you do not need to wait a certain amount of time after nursing or pumping for your breast milk to replenish. When you’re a lactating mother, it’s always replenishing.
But how fast does it replenish?
This depends on a few different things:
- Time of day – Prolactin levels vary over a 24 hour period; they tend to be highest overnight and in the early morning, and lowest in the afternoon. That might mean breast milk may replenish faster at 3am than at 3pm.
- Emptiness of breasts – The emptier the breasts, the faster milk is produced. This means that if you left a lot of milk in your breasts after your last pumping or nursing session, you will make milk more slowly.
- Your milk supply – Obviously, with a higher milk supply, there will be more milk in your breasts faster than if you have a lower milk supply (because more milk is being produced overall).
Can you speed up how long it takes breast milk to replenish?
One thing that you can do is pump or nurse more frequently, and to the point where the breasts are as empty as possible. An empty breast makes milk more quickly than a full breast.
Why does this happen? From Kellymom:
Milk contains a small whey protein called Feedback Inhibitor of Lactation (FIL) – the role of FIL appears to be to slow milk synthesis when the breast is full. Thus milk production slows when milk accumulates in the breast (and more FIL is present), and speeds up when the breast is emptier (and less FIL is present).
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So when should you pump if you want to make sure there is enough for your baby the next time you nurse?
If you’re pumping for a freezer stash or to store milk for a future separation from your baby, try pumping shortly after you finish nursing – maybe 15 to 30 minutes.
That way, your body will have an hour and a half or so to replenish breast milk for your next nursing session.
More on combining pumping and nursing here.
What’s your experience with timing nursing and pumping? Share your experience in the comments!
References
- Bonyata, Kelly. “How does milk production work?” Kellymom. https://kellymom.com/hot-topics/milkproduction/