Foods that Help Milk Production

I can't stand the smell of mother's milk tea and I only managed a sip of the fenugreek tea I bought which I had also heard helped milk production. Luckily, my postpartum nurse mentioned that oatmeal and oatmeal cookies helped milk production.  I'm sure you already figured out what I chose especially since my fabulous mother-in-law was her for a almost two weeks to help us. She made two really great batches of oatmeal cookies that I liked even better after they had been in the freezer. Now that she is gone I am having to make my own oatmeal cookies and I am intent on trying to make them healthier if I am going to be eating them on a regular basis. Stay tuned for recipes.

Meanwhile in my search for foods that help with milk production, my acupuncturist mentioned that barley was a another good choice, so I made a big batch of beef and barley stew and froze it in mason jars in meal size servings. I really wish I had written down the recipe I made up for the crockpot beef and barley stew, but since I  used some random grass-fed beef rib meat which I will probably never randomly have in my freezer again, I'm not sure I could recreate it anyway. I will try to make sure to post my next version of crockpot beef and barley stew.

Meanwhile, I did a search on good foods for milk production. Who knew that these foods had a special term or two... Lactogenic foods which are also called Galactogogues (which is Greek in origin).

Most Galactogogues happen to be herbs...
Check out wikipedia for a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactagogue
I will definitely be trying some burdock and nettle.
I drank some raspberry leaf tea while I was pregnant, but in general it seemed to not work for me like most teas, part of my throwing up for 30 weeks.

For more lactogenic foods...
My mom left a great message on my answering machine after I gave birth to the effect of Chinese people eat lots of ginger and garlic after they give birth "very good for you, eat lots" sadly I erased the message so I can't really approximate the accent or strangeness of the message. This website on lactogenic foods and herbs also mentions garlic and ginger. I'm planning on eating more almonds and cashews which I also seemed to want a lot of in my last few weeks of pregnancy and also after I gave birth and adding some macadamia nuts to my diet, all of which would be great in cookies. I was pretty anti-carrot until the last couple of months of pregnancy and after I gave birth and then it became one of the major vegetables I've been eating. Nice to know that my body was already craving the right milk producing foods before I even gave birth maybe that is why I was leaking colostrum starting at week 33 and my milk came in full-bore so early. Then again who knows. I'm willing to try anything natural that may help keep my milk production up.