Star Uses Cabbage Cure for Painful 'Porno Boobs' While Breastfeeding

Photo by Thinkstock

Five days into new motherhood, my milk came in. Having never done this whole breastfeeding thing before, I didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly did not anticipate the throbbing pain, the weird pebble-like feel of my milk ducts, the heat that seemed to emanate directly from my chest. I texted every mom-friend in my phone for advice, and tips came flooding in: pump, don’t pump, hand-express in the shower, have your husband massage your boob while you feed your baby. A friend with a baby one month older than mine swore by cold cabbage leaves. Her lactation consultant recommended them when she was engorged and they worked wonders, she said. Just take the leaves apart, score them, and slip them inside the bra and I’d feel instant relief.

STORY: Is The Mother Who Breastfeeds Her 3-Year-Old Triplets Extreme?

Willing to try anything, and happy to hear this advice came from an “expert,” I called my mom, who I knew was at the grocery store and was coming to visit later. Within a few hours, I was lying on my couch, cabbage leaves on my chest, completely unaffected by the fact that everyone in my house was laughing at the vegetables sticking out from under my shirt.

The leaves helped… sort of. The chilly temp provided some relief to my over-heated boobs, but so did cold gel pads. Also, the stench of cabbage everywhere I went made me pretty queasy.

STORY: Stranger Pays for Breastfeeding Mom’s Meal

Photo courtesy the Ellen DeGeneres Show

Apparently, I’m not the only one who hangs out with produce inside my bra. On Wednesday’s episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, actress Amanda Peet, who welcomed a baby boy on Dec. 6, explained that she too tried cabbage leaves to help with engorgement for all three of her kids. “Apparently when you get engorged after the baby’s born and the milk comes in you can put cold cabbage leaves on your boobs and apparently it stops the milk,” Peet said before sharing a hilarious photo in which she’s brushing her teeth in a bra full of cabbage. Her husband took the photo, she added, as he was “very amused by my porno boobs, even though I’m in excruciating pain.”

STORY: Alyssa Milano Shares Intimate Breastfeeding Photo

Peet went on to tell Ellen that the leaves barely work, and that the remedy is just an old wive’s tale, which I’ll admit put me on the defensive. I thought it was legit! While I didn’t get a huge amount of relief from the leaves, the advice came from a lactation consultant. It hadn’t occurred to me that the remedy was anything but scientific.

“It’s not a total myth,” Leigh Anne O’Connor, an International Board Certified lactation consultant, tells Yahoo Parenting. “There is a chemical in cabbage that can help reduce engorgement, but as far as I know there’s never been a study on it.”

O’Connor says she recommends her clients put cold cabbage leaves on their breasts until the leaves wilt — about one hour — and to only use it as a temporary measure while addressing the bigger problem of why they’re engorged in the first place. “The feedback I get from mothers is that they’re not sure that it worked but it sure felt good,” she says.

Sounds about right.