So I’ll skip to the moral here. Yes they are worth it.

I’ve eaten my weight in Milkmakers brand. I found them at my favorite nursing store, Special Addition right here in Austin.

They have 3 ingredients (galactagogues) that are believed to increase milk production. These are brewer’s yeast, flax seeds, and oatmeal. They are also chock full of yumminess. They have chocolate chips. What more does a hormonal, new mommy need besides chocolate chip cookies? (Sleep would probably be #1, but you can’t buy that.)

Here’s a great link to some info about these 3 ingredients. There are also two recipes for cookies.

I ate two of them a day in my 3 week-long campaign to increase my supply when Georgia was a newborn. I was also taking fenugreek and pumping every two hours. My supply increased but I cannot say which factor helped–I imagine that they all contributed.

Whether or not they really work, they are really good, and full of healthful ingredients for the whole family.

Pros:

*Did I mention yummy?

*Great justification for eating chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

*They might actually work.

*No crap ingredients like hydrogenated oils and such (You don’t want that in your breast milk!)

Con:

*VERY expensive! At around $20 for a bag of 10 cookies, they are an extravagant treat, but I don’t know many moms with a newborn who can muster the wherewithal to make them at home.

Ok, on this last point…I definitely couldn’t be bothered to research a good recipe and bake lactation cookies myself whilst in the swirling hormonal hell of postpartum life, so these cookies were a comfort. Now though, we are getting ready to travel to Italy and I am worried that the shift in nursing times might throw my supply off kilter.

I also want to bump it up a notch in case we can’t get enough solids meals in during the trip over.

Thinking that I had no excuse NOT to make them myself (since Sugarpie only needs to be held 92.5% of the time now), I went a-researchin’.

I found some recipes and settled on this one from The Leaky Boob. (LOVE this blog! She has moved on from the link posted, but her current blog is here. Please check it out, in any case.) In the comment section, the recipe author mentioned that she subtracted 1/4 cup of each sugar and doubled the amount of flax and brewer’s yeast. I did the same and also used 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of white flour. I’m sure you could use all whole wheat flour, but I wasn’t sure how they would turn out.

Using pasture butter and eggs also ups the Omega 3 factor as well as the it’s-ok-to-have-just-one-more-because-it-will-help-my-baby’s-brain factor. Very important.

I baked them for 6 minutes, which kept them gooey. So here is the final, adapted recipe that I used:

1 cup butter (softened)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons flaxseed meal
4 tablespoons of water
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup regular flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons brewer’s yeast
3 cup rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips
Mix dry ingredients.
Cream together butter and sugar, add eggs, flaxseed and vanilla.
Add to dry ingredients.

Drop on cookie sheet .
Bake 6 minutes on 375º.

They are delicious! My husband likes them too. The recipe yielded about 4 dozen, so I’d say that’s a pretty big savings of money, if not calories 🙂