The Thing Nobody Tells You About Milk Supply

By Saejung Oh, Brand Manager, Hotmilk Lingerie

When I had my first baby, I thought the hard part would be the birth. Nobody warned me that the real challenge — the one that kept me up at night, googling at 3am, crying quietly in the nursery — would be whether I could actually make enough milk to feed him.

I want to share this honestly, because I know I'm not the only one who's been there.

Breastfeeding is hard for a lot of mums. But for some of us, there's an extra layer on top: the constant, low-grade anxiety about supply. Is he getting enough? Why does it feel like it's dropping? Am I doing something wrong?

I remember tracking every feed, every top-up, every ounce I could pump — trying to find proof that things were okay. It's exhausting in a way that's hard to explain unless you've lived it. You're already running on no sleep, and now you're carrying this extra weight of wondering if your body is letting your baby down.

It wasn't.

A friend recommended I try Two Islands & Co's Milk Maker — a lactation support blend she'd used herself. I was honestly skeptical, because by that point I'd tried everything. The teas. Oats in every form I could find. A diet that was basically fatty, oat-heavy meals on repeat. Hot massages before every feed. Lactation cookies by the batch. Drinking so much water I lost count. But I was also at the point where I'd try almost anything.

I started taking it consistently, and over the following weeks, I felt like I noticed a difference. But I have to be honest about what my supply tracking actually looked like at the time. It wasn't casual curiosity — I was tracking constantly, recording every increase and every dip like my worth as a mother depended on the numbers. It became something I was fixated on, and it took a real mental toll. I felt ashamed. I kept asking myself why I couldn't produce something that was supposed to come “naturally” to any woman after giving birth.

I want to be really clear here: this is just my personal experience, not a promise of what it'll do for anyone else. Every body and every feeding journey is different, and what felt like it helped me isn't a guarantee for you. But for me, in that moment, it was the first thing that made me feel like I had a little bit of control back.

More than any trend on a page, though, it was the relief. The mental load of worrying eased. I could just feed my baby without the constant background noise of doubt.

I work at Hotmilk now, and every day I'm reminded that breastfeeding is rarely just about the bra, or just about the milk, or just about any one thing. It's about the whole experience — the physical, the emotional, the logistics of it all. Lisa built this brand around the belief that your body isn't the problem. But I also know firsthand that sometimes your body needs a bit of extra support to do the incredible thing it's already trying to do.

That's why I still think about Two Islands & Co during World Breastfeeding Week. It's not a brand I'm mentioning because it's convenient — it's one I actually used, during one of the harder chapters of my own motherhood.

I'm not here to tell you what to do this World Breastfeeding Week (1–7 August) — I can only speak to my own experience, and I'm not saying it'll do the same for you. But if you're in the thick of a similar worry and want to try something new, Milk Maker is what helped me feel like I had a little bit of control back.

To every mum currently in it — worrying, googling, tracking, trying —

I see you. You're not doing it wrong. 🤍

Saejung is Hotmilk's Brand Manager and a mum who's lived every stage this brand designs for.