How To Sleep Comfortably With Engorged Breasts?
You may have had sleepless nights after giving birth as a result of your baby waking up and needing to be fed, but now that he is finally sleeping through the night, there is a risk that you won’t be able to go asleep again, but the cause may be different, such as breast engorgement.
Breast engorgement occurs when your breasts feel bigger and lumpier while you lie down to sleep. We’ll give you some recommendations in this post to help you sleep easily with an engorged breast. Continue reading!
How To Sleep Comfortably With Engorged Breasts?
Here are some ideas to help you sleep comfortably with engorged breasts. Take a look!
1. Prepare Yourself For Sleep
Even if you are irritated due to engorged breasts, make everything around you comfy. Have a dim light in the room and create an aura that helps you feel peaceful, such as a clean bedsheet, comfy nightsuit, pleasant setting, and so on. All of these external elements can help to alleviate your discomfort and improve your sleep.
2. Change Your Position
Every person sleeps differently. If you wake up feeling achy or sore after sleeping on your back. Consider shifting a bit to your side and sliding a cushion beneath. While you’re sleeping, it could help to reduce some of the strain on your upper body.
If both of these tips don’t work for you, try:
3. Expressing Some Milk On a Towel
Keep in mind that your breasts operate on a supply-and-demand basis. Don’t be disheartened if you need to express a little milk during the night; it will provide you with immediate relief.
You don’t want to express too much milk; just enough to keep you comfortable. Depending on how long your baby sleeps, this may happen several times over the night.
However, your body should acclimatize in a couple of nights. Even if the relief is divine, don’t be tempted to express milk equivalent to your baby’s feed during the night.
If you express too much milk at 3 or 4 hourly intervals, your body will think your baby needs more milk. As a result, you will produce significantly more milk and may experience engorgement at any time. Not just at night. Keep in mind that you can take a little off the top at any time, not only at night.
4. Take a Warm Bath
A warm shower or bath, followed by a little massage, will surely reduce your pain and allow you to sleep soundly later. Many people are skeptical of this recommendation, claiming that after taking a bath, they wouldn’t be unable to sleep again. However, this is not the case for everyone. Each of us is unique. So, if you don’t have trouble taking a bath, try this advice.
5. Apply Cold Packs
Ice or cold packs help reduce pain in painful breasts and discomfort from engorged breasts, especially after nursing or pumping. While the cold may provide you some relief, it may also make you less likely to produce milk, which might contribute to oversupply and severe engorgement.
So, apply ice packs only for a short duration. You can use little ice packs that easily fit into your nursing bra after nursing. Your supply should stabilize more quickly as a result of this.
6. Give It Time
Treat your body with patience! It takes time to learn how to breastfeed and control milk production, especially in the first few weeks after birth. The feeding habits of newborns might vary greatly. You could discover that you suddenly go to longer lengths without eating at night or that you cluster-feed continuously.
Breast engorgement is a common early breastfeeding symptom for most moms. The baby’s schedule should begin to automatically adjust when it gets a bit older, and this will also happen with your milk production.
Breastfeeding might be particularly challenging at first, but if you stick with it, it will get easier and easier.
Tips To Help Prevent Engorgement
Besides trying the ways to treat breast engorgement, try these preventive tips given below for treatments for breast engorgement:
1. Massage Your Breasts
Mothers should try to promote the best milk flow possible during feedings. To encourage milk flow, they might try gently massaging their breasts when they nurse their infant.
2. Breastfeed Frequently
In order to lower your chances of developing engorgement worse, breastfeed your infant frequently. A newborn will normally sleep for a considerable period of time following her first feeding, which should take place within the first hour of birth. If no medications were given during birth, she may then desire to feed often or even cluster feed.
A baby’s stomach is just a little larger than a marble in the early stages. It seems logical that she would want to feed often in order to get little amounts of colostrum.
You should try to keep your infant close to you at all times and engage in as much skin-to-skin contact as you can. By doing this, you’ll be able to recognize your baby’s feeding cues and make sure no meals are missed.
3. Ascertain A Good Latch
To assist the infant latch, mothers can find it beneficial to speak with a lactation professional. It’s crucial to have a healthy breastfeeding latch to make sure the milk supply is completely emptied. This will also assist in avoiding additional problems, such as uncomfortable or inflamed nipples.
4. Wean Gradually
Mothers should not abruptly quit nursing when the infant is ready to stop. It is preferable to gradually reduce a baby’s feedings while weaning him or her. As a result, milk production or milk supply in the breasts will progressively decrease, reducing the risk of engorged breasts.
Conclusion
The nursing experience for mothers is a journey filled with highs and lows, successes and failures. Engorgement affects the majority of women at some time, and while it can be uncomfortable, there is no need to be alarmed because it is readily treatable.
You can make use of the aforementioned advice to sleep peacefully with engorged breasts. These tips should enable you to swiftly and easily get beyond engorgement so that you may enjoy feeding your lovely baby at every chance.
References
https://onewillow.com/blog/baby-is-sleeping-more-at-night-how-do-i-deal-with-engorgement/
https://mumsinvited.com/how-to-prevent-engorgement-overnight/