A warm tea of fennel and anise (sometimes with dill) used both to support a nursing mother's milk and to ease colic in the breastfed baby through the mother's milk.
Fennel-anise tea is one of those remedies that crosses every culture's grandmother — it shows up in Black, Mediterranean, Latin American, and South Asian households alike as the answer to a colicky baby and a struggling supply. It is gentle, cheap, and available anywhere.
Fennel, anise, and dill are anethole-rich seeds traditionally used as galactagogues across the Mediterranean and North Africa; anethole is a mild phytoestrogen thought to underlie the folk milk-supporting effect. Equally important, these are classic carminatives — when the nursing mother drinks the tea, the calming, antispasmodic effect is understood to pass through the milk to soothe a colicky, gassy baby, which is why fennel-anise water is a near-universal grandmother remedy for the screaming-evening infant. For the mother herself the warm fluid supports supply and her own digestion in the slowed postpartum gut.
Crush 1 teaspoon mixed fennel and anise seed (add a little dill seed if desired), steep in just-boiled water 10 minutes, strain, and drink warm and unsweetened or lightly sweetened. The mother drinks it; the calming effect reaches the baby through nursing.
Free, no account needed to ask.