Excess Milk

Excess Milk (hyperlactation): When there’s too much milk

Although many mothers worry about a possible shortage of milk, the opposite problem—excess milk, or hyperlactation—can also cause a lot of trouble for both mother and baby. It is a condition where a woman’s body produces significantly more milk than the baby can consume.

How to recognize hyperlactation?

Symptoms in the mother:

• Constant feeling of fullness and breast engorgement.
• Frequent blocked milk ducts and risk of mastitis.
• Strong milk leakage between feedings.
• Very powerful, "shooting" milk flow at the start of a feeding.

Symptoms in the baby:

• The baby "chokes" on milk at the beginning of a feeding, coughs, and lets go of the breast.
• Frequent spitting up or reflux due to swallowing large amounts of air.
• Discomfort near the breasts, crying during feeding.
• Digestive problems: gas, foamy, greenish stool (due to an imbalance of "foremilk" and "hindmilk").

Causes and correction

Sometimes hyperlactation is a physiological trait of the woman. However, it is often the result of improper actions at the start of lactation, such as pumping too frequently "to stimulate" or feeding from both breasts in a single session when it isn’t needed.

Correcting hyperlactation involves "re‑training" the body. Main methods include feeding from one breast for a set time block (block‑feeding) and changing feeding positions. It is important to do this under the supervision of a breastfeeding consultant to avoid reducing milk supply too much. For more details on the basics of feeding, read on our website.