A nurse in maternal-child health care for almost 30 years, she served for two years as the International Lactation Consultant Association President. She and husband, Joe, an OB-GYN based in Cincinnati, Ohio, have raised five children including a set of twins. It takes time to learn to recognize and adapt to the different, yet normal, approaches of two, three, four, or more babies. Many of the questions LLL Leaders get from worried mothers of multiples are about perceived rather than actual breastfeeding problems. Understanding how enough milk is produced, what infant behaviors and feeding patterns are considered normal, and how to coordinate multiples' multiple breastfeedings may increase your confidence during the early learning period with your newborns.
Milk is produced within each breast in cells that cluster to form numerous balloon-shaped alveoli.
One such cluster is called an alveolus. Milk is made in these cells from nutrients taken from your blood and then secreted into the lumen of the alveoli, which may be likened to the inside of a balloon. The milk stored in these lumen empties into small milk ducts, which in turn empty into larger ducts that transport milk to even larger mammary ducts before widening into what are called the lactiferous, or milk, sinuses lying just beneath the areola. There are about 15 to 25 lactiferous sinuses that open at the nipple tip. This occurs when the hormone oxytocin causes muscle cells around alveoli to contract, forcing milk stored in alveolar lumen into the ducts and eventually out through nipple pores.