How Long Will I Be Engorged For?

If it you have no physical reason why you can't take an antihistamine. Take antihistamine's for a couple of days. They will help you dry up.

The opposite is true if you don't want to dry up, Don't take antihistamines.

I did not read all the post so this may have been said already....my doctor told me to get a tight fitting sports bra and put green cabbage leaves on my breasts, and to take Claritin D ( a decongestant, will dry things up) Hope this helps for you, it did for me!

Hi K.,
You may want to ask your doctor, but with my first daughter I started to dry up while taking antihistamines for allergies. I didn't want to dry up...but I was taking Benadryl for my allergies it started to. My doctor told me that's what to take when you want to dry up (I stopped taking it). Otherwise I suggest the same as others...do it gradually and bind.
Good luck.

I'm not an expert, but I did breastfeed 3 children and from everything I remember reading you don't want to stop cold turkey like it sounds you are doing. You might develop mastitis or something like that. You need to slowly reduce feedings or pump and dump even if it just manually expressing while you are in the shower each night until you don't have the full feeling. If that doesn't work because you have become too engorged then use cold cabbage leaves to soften your breast, it also encourages let down and you should feel the milk releasing. When the leaves get warm, use another leaf. The leaves will work eventually. If you can't get to the store now, try sitting in a hot shower and relax and hopefully the milk will leak out. You don't ever want it to get that bad. I think I remember reading, it takes a week, not a day. If you have any questions, please send me a private message and I'll send you my number. I know what you are going through, my first daughter decided she didn't want to nurse when she was about 5 days old, I was in so much pain for about 5 hours from being engorged; I wanted to go back to the hospital. I waited to long and I learned a very important lesson. She finally did start to nurse again, but the next time I felt too full and she didn't want to eat, I used a pump just for a few minutes.

Hi K., I went through the same thing when I stopped and it was so painful! The only thing that relieved my pain was self-expressing. You won't get much milk out but just enough to relieve the pain.

K.,

there are some things you can do to help. Stopping over night is very difficult, it is much easier to wean the baby off of your breast. But treat this the same as primary engorgement to prevent mastitis.

Cooold cabbage leaves surrounding the breast thruoughout the day changing every 2 hours or when they start to smell like cooked cabbage. You can try putting an ace bandage on your breasts and avoid stimulation as well as the cabbage and also take some benadryl. Then it takes about 3 days to dry up so that they don't hurt.

The dr's no longer prescribe the old medication that would dry you up because it was found to cause blood clots as well.

If you begin to feel like you have the flu with chills, fever and ache, call your obgyn for antibiotice, those are some of the symptoms of mastitis, particularly when combined with tender and hot or red breasts.

When in doubt see a lactation consultant, sometimes we can help.

K., RN, IBCLC, @ The Nestingplace

Pump or nurse a little each day slowly decreasing it. Also wear very tight underwire bras and maybe try decreasing your intake of fluids throughout the day. You most likely don't want to stop cold turkey if you still have a decent supply or you will end up with mastitis.

Stopping bfing cold turkey is not a good thing. You put yourself at risk for mastitis and plugged ducts. If I were you and in pain, I'd nurse the baby and then plan to slowly taper off. She's still pretty young so the longer you breast feed, the better for you both.

It usually takes 2 to 3 days, but it depends on your own body. But I can tell you that if you empty them it will just take longer. Also there are things the doc can give you to dry it up!

If you are just stopping cold turkey, it will probably take about 2-3 days for you to be back to normal. That is how it was for me.

Hi K.,

If you slowly reduce your feedings over the next couple of weeks, you won't have a problem with engorgement. Start out by replacing 1 feeding a day with formula, and go from there. If you stop nursing all of a sudden, it will definately be painful!

For now, if you don't want to nurse your baby, then at lease pump out a little just to make yourself more comfortable. As long as you begin to pump fewer times a day than what you were feeding, the engorgement will not be so bad. Just continue to reduce the pumpings over the next several days.

Hope that helps!

Typically the best way to stop breast feeding is slowly. You cu out a feeding or two at time and replace them with formula. If I were you I would at least self express a little bit of your milk just to stop the pain. I highly recommend stopping breast feeding slowly though. I think if you do the cold turkey method it will take more than a few days for your milk to dry up. Every time your baby or any baby cries - you are going to feel the pain.

I actually just spoke to my doctor about this the other day. She told me getting back on the bc pill will help dry up your milk, otherwise you need to bind your breasts with an ace bandage. Hope this helps...

How long your are engorged is dependent on your body but there are things you can do to help dry you up and decrease the engoregement. You can place cabbage leaves across your nipples. Some people recommend placing them in the fridge first. You can also get 6 in ACE wrap and bind your breasts. This worked best for me. The smell of cabbage made me naseous (sp?). Hope this helps
-J.

I was reading your post and was wondering about a couple of things that would be helpful in answering your question. How many feedings are you down to? Three? Two? One? I would HIGHLY suggest you taper off gradually rather than stop cold turkey. For me, from when I started tapering off till when I felt comfortable and "normal", it took almost 6 weeks. I was b-feeding about 3x/day and cut out the middle one, then the morning, the the night, taking about a week and a half for each. Afterwards I still had to pump a little bit to just relieve the engorgement. I only did that a few times. I have never heard of it taking just one day... you would be really lucky if that happened! Send me a message if you want more info! Good luck!

K., You'll be engorged about a week, but you can aleve it by put a warm washcloth around your chest and it'll help release some of the milk and pain as well. You can also try pumping once a day for about two or three days. And, also you can put a ace bandage tightly around your chest along with a sports bar. That is what I did after I stopped with both of my children.