Letdown Techniques

• make a tape of your baby cooing, crying, whatever special noise he/she makes. Play the tape on a personal tape player/walkman while you're pumping.
• take a towel or piece of clothing which smells like the baby with you.
• Put warm compresses or paper towels on your breasts right before pumping.
• singing some of the some nighttime songs and reciting the same book to myself that I sing/read when Ellie nurses as she's falling asleep. I figured it would help relax me and my body would know that when I'm singing that song and reading that book then it needs to produce milk. It did help some.
• I've found that if I stop and just slightly rearrange the horns to be a little off center after pumping for 6 minutes or so, it helps stimulate different glands and I seem to get more out.
• Try to pump in a warm location.
• the biggest difference to me in supply has been the discovery that i can bring on more than one let-down when i pump! i don't get a let-down from the pump alone. i rub my nipples til i feel the tingling & then i pump. when it's down to one drop or so, i stop, do the rub thing again until i feel the tingling & then pump some more.
• Warm compresses (if they're damp as well, that's even better)
• When I was pumping for my daughter (now almost 2), I had a lot of luck getting more production, more quickly when I applied warmth to my breasts before I pumped. I found something called a "bed buddy", which was a bag of beans, basically, that can be heated and reheated in the microwave, and applied to stiff shoulders and joints. I would heat it up, and apply it to both of my breasts before pumping. Then, while I pumped one side, I would keep it on the other side. The heat "loosened" up my milk, and I got more milk per session than I did without the heat.
• I'm sure massaging the breasts before and during pumping would achieve the same results, but it really doesn't work as well for me as using the bed buddy.
• You can make an inexpensive heating pad in various shapes just by using brown rice. My doula used a tube sock filled with brown rice on my neck and back when I was in labor. You just microwave it and it provides moist heat. You could sew a container specifically, or just use a sock as she did if that shape would work for you.