Nursing or breastfeeding is feeding a baby with milk that is created from mammary glands in breasts of female mammals. Newborns have a reflex for milking the breast, so this process should be very easy and painless, besides being very healthy and natural.
When baby starts sucking, some pain can occur, but it shouldn\'t last longer than 30-60 seconds. If, however, the pain, continues, breastfeeding should be discontinued immediately and other nipple should be offered. The composition and the amount of breast milk changes depending on how old is the baby and does it eat other foods and on the quantity it sucks out at each session. It is recommended that breastfeeding is continued at least for six months or more since it is highly beneficial both for the infant and the mother.
Weaning is the process of introducing the baby with solid food. It usually starts at the age of six months, while complete weaning can occur after a year or even two. In the beginning the body produces larger amounts of milk and more often, but as time passes and the baby needs more milk, the body reacts by producing smaller amounts. When a woman wants to stop breastfeeding completely, she should be aware of complications such as mastitis due to not removing all the milk from the breast. So the process of weaning can be slow.
At first, the mother can nurse a baby just a little for a certain session, then offer it a bottle, then completely omit nursing for that session. As time goes by, the mother should omit nursing from all sessions except morning and evening ones. After she stops nursing completely, she should pump out the milk that was produced, but not all, in order to give the body a signal it does not have to produce any more of it.
In the case a pain occurs in any of the breasts, there are drugs on the market used for drying up breast milk, but there are also home remedies that are proved to be successful. Cold cabbage leaves have some effect. A woman should apply compresses of cabbage leaves in order to soften the breast tissue and reduce the pain.
Dried sage can help reduce the amount of milk in breasts. A woman should drink a quarter of a teaspoon of dried sage three times a day, for a couple of days. It can be taken with vegetable, but not with fruit juice. Also, sage tea can be used for reducing the milk supply. It is made when a cup of boiling water is poured over 20 g of dried sage and drank after 5 to 15 minutes. This tea can be taken 2 to 6 times a day.
The other way of drying up breast milk is by putting fresh jasmine flowers on the breasts.Other herbs effective with drying up breast milk are peppermint, spearmint, parsley, black walnut, lemon balm, oregano which can also be mixed with pressed oil and rubbed into breasts. It has been recorded that some women have actually used strong peppermint candies for drying up breast milk.
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