Moms share breastfeeding secrets

If you've ever had a baby, you know there are plenty of people who want to give you advice, from getting your baby to sleep to getting them to eat.

Recently, researchers tracked down advice about breastfeeding and what they found was surprising.

When it comes to breastfeeding, Erin Meyers says the third time's a charm. Her youngest baby feeds easily, but that wasn't the case with her first.

"She was very difficult. We were having a really hard time with her. She wouldn't latch on right. My milk was not coming in right."

Desperate for help, Erin turned to a friend who turned her on to a breastfeeding secret, taking a supplement called fenugreek.

Doctor John Schaffir with Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center says he learned more about it from his patients than he ever did from his professors.

“Sometimes these sorts of anecdotal pieces of advice are because it has been shown to help in various women over years and years, and then just nobody ever really bothered to study it."

So that's what Dr. Schaffir and his colleagues did. Not to see if it actually works, but where the advice came from.

Surprisingly, despite any formal medical recommendations, breastfeeding specialists in 29 different states relayed the same advice.

For milk production women recommend to each other taking fenugreek, milk thistle or eating oatmeal. And for pain, applying cabbage leaves or tea bags.

Dr. Schaffir says, "It's sort of a universal experience that all women go through, where they talk to each other, and everyone feels like they need to give some advice to their friends or sisters or daughters. So it's a field that, so to speak, is fertile with these kinds of remedies."