Sometimes regular stimulation is enough. I saw one case where a man took on an orphaned infant where there wasn’t even any animal milk available to hack together formula, and the starving infant attempting to get milk out of his nipple every hour for multiple days was enough to get the one breast to start making milk, and the infant lived thanks to it.
The need for suckling to stimulate milk production is a catch-22 for women who don’t make enough milk. They have to supplement with formula to prevent “failure to thrive”, but the infant spending some of its sucking time on a bottle instead of a breast reduces their supply even more, so then they have to feed even more formula… There are devices that run a tube to the nipple so the infant can get formula from the tube while at the same time stimulating breast milk production, and they work, but look like a huge pain.
Sometimes regular stimulation is enough. I saw one case where a man took on an orphaned infant where there wasn’t even any animal milk available to hack together formula, and the starving infant attempting to get milk out of his nipple every hour for multiple days was enough to get the one breast to start making milk, and the infant lived thanks to it.
The need for suckling to stimulate milk production is a catch-22 for women who don’t make enough milk. They have to supplement with formula to prevent “failure to thrive”, but the infant spending some of its sucking time on a bottle instead of a breast reduces their supply even more, so then they have to feed even more formula… There are devices that run a tube to the nipple so the infant can get formula from the tube while at the same time stimulating breast milk production, and they work, but look like a huge pain.