For many years, women have used cabbage leaves to help with breast engorgement while they are breastfeeding. Cabbage leaves can help not only to soothe sore nipples, but to actually help with relieving the engorgement. A compress of cabbage leaves can help to unclog those clogged up milk ducts, which relieves the pressure that builds up during engorgement. This, in turn, reduces the swelling of the breasts that occurs with engorgement, and will help to soften the areola and make it easer for your baby to latch on.

Using cabbage leaves to help with engorgement is as straight forward as it sounds. You will want to purchase a plain green cabbage. You will then rinse and dry the leaves, and store them in the refrigerator. After the leaves have cooled, you will take them back out. You will remove the base of the hard core vein, and you will gently pound the leaves. Once the cabbage leaves have been softened, you will wrap them around the areola and the breast. You will want to make sure that the nipple is left exposed. You should experience some relief right away, as the cold often feels good on engorged breasts. You can cover the entire breast, as well as the area under your arms if you wish. You should check your breasts periodically, so that once your breasts are ready to express the breast milk you can pump or nurse. You can use cabbage leaves for longer periods of time, replacing the leaves after every 30 minutes or so. You can use them as much as three times in between feedings, as well.

There are also herbal breast compresses available that do much the same things as cabbage leaves in terms of helping with engorgement. In some cases, these compresses may even have cabbage leaves as an ingredient. The advantage to a herbal compress is that, first of all, there is much less in terms of preparation that you need to do. In addition, the other herbs in an herbal breast compress may help with breast engorgement faster or more efficiently than cabbage leaves alone.

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