Hi! I am Susun Weed, the voice of The Wise Women Tradition. One of my past apprentices asked me if I would make a YouTube especially for her, this is for you Astrid of the Grove. Astrid is a wonderful midwife, and midwifery is not just about having your babies. It's also about dealing with those babies when they are born and for most women that means breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding can however cause shall we say some discomfort. For most women the first three days are after the birth are pretty okay, you look down and you say wow!. My breast have never been quite this big, but it's not too uncomfortable. Yet then the milk comes in and you think how my goodness what I can possibly do?
Well there is a few things you could do to ease that push of the first milk. The simplest is to just run some hot water in a sink lean over and put your breast in that hot water. The simpler one of course is to just to keep your baby near by and let your baby nurse it all of the time, but sometimes that can make your nipple sour. So if you need to just lean over into some hot water that will really soothe those breasts.
You can also use herbs. Of course parsley is a herb that's available at most stores. So you can take some parsley and chop it up or you can dip it in boiling water and then apply that parsley right to the sour area of the breast. This is especially effective if later on you get an infection in the breast that even in the beginning when that milk is coming in, a nice parsley poultice will work.
You don't want to go after the store, grab a potato. Grade up that potato and put that potato all over breast. The potato is so cooling, it'll calm your breast down and calm you down a little too.
Of course one of the favorites of women who live where comfrey is grown is a comfrey leaf poultice. Comfrey not only does what the other herbs do which is to soothe and ease off that pain, but comfrey also makes the tissues of the nipple stronger and tougher, so that when the baby nurses it it's a lot less likely to cause any irritation at the nipple.
What if there is some irritation at the nipple. Any kind of oil from olive oil to ordinary butter will definitely help ease that tissue. If you want to, you can use herbs that are infused in olive oil. Some of our favorites are comfrey which we were just talking about.
Hi! Monica Jean how are you doing? You want me hand to you something new. Oh! Oh what did you find, is there an ant in the sand? An ant in the sand yeah, or hypericum oil and we have hypericum perforatum which really helps stop pain a lot. So we can use comfrey oil or we can use hypericum oil or just any ordinary oil to help ease that pain, and ease that chapping as well.
Some women like lanolin, some women don't like lanolin. It's up to you if you want to use that. I think the simpler home remedies are a lot easier.
A few women say that they have hard time making enough milk. Well, Megan knows that I always suggest that pregnant or lactating, sick or well, but we drink a quart of nourishing herbal infusion everyday, the nourishing herbal infusions that are the most likely to bring up that milk production are stinging nettle and oatstraw, but all of them are just wonderful.
We want to stay away from rigging any sage, because sage actually dries up the milk.
If you are drinking your quart of infusion and you are getting good food and you are still feel like you are not making enough milk then your remedy could be fenugreek. Fenugreek seeds are easy to buy. They make a delicious tea that is considered all over the world the most effective remedy to increase the amount of milk that a woman is making.
Very simple to prepare, take a spoon full of fenugreek seeds, it can be a teaspoon or a tablespoon it matters not, put it into your cup pour boiling water over it, wait for two or three minutes not too much longer and then drink your fenugreek tea, you can sweeten it with some honey if you want to.
When I was teaching in Hawaii and I was really sweating a lot everyday I drank fenugreek tea every morning, because it makes your sweat smell like maple syrup and I thought that, that would be a friendly thing to do. So don't be worried if you suddenly find that you could smell like maple syrup after you have been drinking a fenugreek tea.
These are just a few of the remedies to help women who are breastfeeding. You'll find lots more in my book "Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year' and this is Susun Weed, the voice of the Wise Women Tradition, telling you that herbal medicine is peoples' medicine, let's all play. Green Blessings!
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