Day Two

This morning I jumped down the Fenugreek rabbit hole because someone asked me if I use it.

Fenugreek is an herb with many purported health benefits, including supporting milk production. I do not use it, mainly because I have a high level of comfort with the process of lactation and so have never seen the need to mess around with it.

But I was curious and so I read up — and not by using Google for my info. Here is a partial list of articles I read this morning:

Bazzano, Alessandra N, Littrell, Lisa, Brandt, Amelia, Thibeau, Shelley, Thriemer, Kamala, & Theall, Katherine P. (2016). Health provider experiences with galactagogues to support breastfeeding: A cross-sectional survey. Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 9(1), 623-630.

Khan, Tahir Mehmood, Wu, David Bin‐Chia, & Dolzhenko, Anton V. (2018). Effectiveness of fenugreek as a galactagogue: A network meta‐analysis. Phytotherapy Research, 32(3), 402-412.

Ravi, Reena, & Joseph, Jasmine. (2020). Effect of fenugreek on breast milk production and weight gain among Infants in the first week of life. Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health, 8(3), 656-660.

Sevrin, Thomas, Alexandre-Gouabau, Marie-Cécile, Castellano, Blandine, Aguesse, Audrey, Ouguerram, Khadija, Ngyuen, Patrick, . . . Boquien, Clair-Yves. (2019). Impact of Fenugreek on Milk Production in Rodent Models of Lactation Challenge. Nutrients, 11(11), 2571.

My conclusion: milk supply issues are typically cognitive in nature — as in, humans perceive there is a milk supply issue — not that there actually is a milk supply issue.

Education and support are the best things we can do to support milk production — and I am talking about the humans involved because milk supply is actually not high on the list of concerns for a mother dog.

If I found myself in the very rare situation in which milk supply was a real issue — and I had done all the right things over a period of 2 - 3 days to increase the supply (more frequent nursing and increased water/food intake of the mom) — I would be willing to try Fenugreek because there does seem evidence of a “…very mild effect of fenugreek on the breast milk production…” (Khan et al., 2018, p. 10).

The issue with routine use of Fenugreek is what multiple authors identified: the safety profile is not clear. Likely it is okay but more research is needed and I will leave that to the experts.

Bottom Line for me — if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Here is our morning weight data. I love the new scale but do not like that it doesn’t weigh in ounces and so I did the math and included ounces.

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I also looked up Claire’s birth weight — she was just under 20 ounces at birth (1.25 pounds), and was one of the biggest in that litter. Six of the Bright Stars were born heavier than Claire, which is just crazy because Claire was a big puppy.

This is newborn Claire.

Berners grow into their white and so puppies that seem to have SO much white do not grow up to have that much white — good to keep in mind as you look at the photos of these well-marked puppies.