Increasing breast milk production for premature infants with a relaxation/imagery audiotape.

Many women whose premature infants are hospitalized in a newborn intensive care unit choose to express breast milk for their babies. Yet anxiety, fatigue, and emotional stress are powerful inhibitors of lactation. To facilitate the breast-feeding experience, intervention mothers were given a 20-minute audio cassette tape based on relaxation and visual imagery techniques. At a single follow-up expression of milk at the hospital approximately 1 week after enrollment, they expressed 63% more breast milk than a randomized group of control mothers. The fat content of the breast milk in the two groups was not significantly different. Among a small group of mothers whose infants were receiving mechanical ventilation, the increase in milk volume compared with that of control mothers was 121%. Longer-term effects of the relaxation/imagery approach (such as extending the duration of breast-feeding or reducing parental stress after hospital discharge) and the physiologic basis for the increased volume of expressed milk (improved milk production v more efficient milk ejection) are appropriate topics for future research.