2 Productivity Lessons from Low Breast Milk Experience

This article first appeared on www.workandrelationships.wordpress.com

A few weeks after my baby was born, I noticed a decline in my breast milk. Like many moms, I felt a sense of failure and guilt, primarily because I was determined to do exclusive breastfeeding. In my quest to understand my problem, I discover what I needed to do to increase milk production and general productivity. What I lacked were sleep and water-what I now call refueling factors.

Sleep Your Way to Productivity

I was all overworking during the day and sleeping in between feeding at night. Obviously, I was fatigued. One day, out of my frustrations with low breast milk, I decided to sleep through an afternoon. By the evening, the milk started coming back. And that’s how I discovered that I had to slow down to produce milk.

In her TEDx Talk, Arianna Huffington advises women to “sleep away to the top.” Such advice is contrary to a culture that applauds working round the clock and shuns taking breaks. Studies show that sleep is vital for brain functions, such as cognition, concentration, performance, and productivity. During sleep, you lose your conscious awareness, and both your brain and body enter a calm state. In this condition, you regain energy and repair/grow muscle tissue, making your body ready for more work. Irrespective of how many hours you spend sleeping, ensure that you get quality rest (not oversleeping).

Drink water

My diet was right. I kept researching the internet on food that boosts breast milk. I ate tons of them, but they could not help. Later, I realized that the problem was water- I did not drink enough of it. This discovery is not surprising as breast milk is made up of 90 percent water.

Among the many benefits, water maximizes physical performance by maintaining body temperature, increasing motivation, reducing fatigue, reducing oxidative stress during high-intensity exercise, and increasing mental strength. Further, your brain functionality depends on hydration. Scientific evidence shows that brain cells decrease efficiency when you lose too much water, affecting both short-term and long-term memory. If you have trouble making mental calculations, you could be dehydrated!

Now, as you think about shutting your eyes and hydrating for productivity, here are some additional facts I gathered.

Water and sleep are interrelated

• Rule of 8: It is recommended that you get 8 hours of sleep and take 8 glasses of water
• Drinking water can improve your sleep. Lack of pre-bed fluids causes dryness in the mouth and nasal passages, which sets you up for snoring, parched throat, and hoarseness. Further, dehydration can lead to uncomfortable nocturnal leg cramps.
• Inadequate sleep affects hydration. A study shows that people who slept 6 hours had more concentrated urine than those who had 8 hours. In other words, short sleep duration is associated with inadequate hydration.

Want to bring your A-game? Refuel your system with enough sleep and water ??.