#to note: we appreaciate the respect of being called miss misc

[miscling]

Hiya, fellow cow here, trying oh so very hard to make milk. We were wondering if you could share any tips you have for it. Did you *have* to start domperidone to start expressing. We take a lot of progesterone and hope that'll be enough, and that it just hasn't happened yet cause we dont make it to pumping every day. If its not a bother please may we have some guidance Miss Misc. We very much appreciate every time we see you sharing your information and experience, and havent seen this talked about direct yet. (We may well have missed it) 💕

hello moo friend!

the short answer is, yeah, we didn't make anything other than miniscule lumps of colostrum before we started taking domperidone.

the longer answer is that the miscellany usually posts more about our lactation journey on @mommy-misc from more of a mommy breastfeeding angle, and this thing likes the more hucow type stuff. getting our milk flowing was really big for us in both the breast growth and gender affirming categories, so we're doing it for ourselves, not just for kink.

basically though, any advice you can find on breastfeeding is gonna help. look up the newman-goldfarb protocol (a protocol for folks to start lactation in preparation for adopting a baby they wish to breastfeed), which is how to get the most out of domperidone, we never had much success with otc supplements either. domperidone is a wonder drug for this process. in short, you take an increased progesterone dose for a few months, then stop and start taking domperidone, and that gets your production going.

it can't really be understated how much lactation does bring with it a ton of lifestyle changes. you will need to eat more and set aside time for expressing and keep to the schedule as best you can. we spend around three hours a day on it, in half-hour sessions. (5 times a day at the moment.) our appetite went into overdrive and we put on a lot of weight very quickly when we started producing for real.

ideally, at least for a few weeks at the start, you need a half-hour of expressing every two hours you're awake, and also to wake up in the middle of the night to express. your milk production will start off slow and quickly rise, until it reaches a plateau after a couple of months. sometimes you can stop taking the domperidone and it'll keep going as long as you keep expressing, but our experience is that ours stopped as soon as we stopped taking domperidone.

it knows it sounds daunting and please don't be discouraged - the process is fully worth it, and something it recommends for anyone who wants to see some significant breast growth without surgeries. it loves the fact we make enough milk ourself that we're very nearly able to cut cows milk out of our diet entirely.

hope this helps!