Pumping breast milk instead of skin to skin breast feeding. ?

Question

I plan on pumping my breast milk once my milk comes in after my baby is born. I was wondering if some of you could share how you went about this process since the first few days you have to breast feed to get the colostrum and your body has to get a feeding routine going to know how much milk to produce. Like when did you start pumping? How often did you pump? Did your baby experience any nipple confusion?

Answer 1

I think you may be being a bit optimistic here - it will take more than just the first few days to get your b*****s used to producing the right amount of milk, and baby is far more efficient at doing that than any pump can be.

If you want baby to get breastmilk, the best way to do that is to breastfeed directly. Don't even worry about pumping until you are starting to think about going back to work. The more established brestfeeding is, the better.

You can't tell if you will have problems expressing. I never had any problems feeding my daughter (five minutes and she was done, chubby baby, exclusively breastfed for 6 months) - but I struggled to express anything at all, so if she needed a bottle while I worked part time she had formula. She also couldn't get the hang of nipples - not so much confusion as complete failure. She did far better with an Avent soft spout which fits on a bottle - you could see her "breastfeeding" on it with her jaw muscles.

Answer 2

i breast fed both my kids and it was a really good experience but expressing the milk was difficult because it takes a long time to get the milk out. my second daughter refused anythying other than the breast so a bottle was out of the question anyway. i think you should try to avoid using the bottle as much as you can because they can get confused and play up  

Answer 3

I began breast feeding immediately after birth for 3 weeks, then went to exclusive pumping. I began pumping during that 3rd week. You may want to have formula in case you don't pump enough right away. It took me a few weeks before I could produce a lot of milk through pumping. My pediatrician also informed me that you can increase milk supply by feeding your baby bottles skin to skin, or letting the baby "snack" from your b*****s before you give them the bottle. The more you pump (and pump often for a while) the more you will produce. Having a good electric double pump is important (I use Medela Pump In Style Advanced). I actually rented a hospital grade "Symphony" medela pump for a week just to help build my supply. Good luck!

Answer 4

I have pumped for my baby, especially so in the first few days (at that time, hand expressing) as my baby was a prem, and was gavage fed. I started to use a pump (also a madela) after my milk came in, originally because he knew no different, no there was no confusion, but i did find that with exclusive pumping my milk dwindled. Until in the end, i was on medications to increase my milk supply. Really you should pump every 4 hours as it lines up with when your baby would be feeding, i did however find that once he was home there was confusion and he refused to take the breast, so even with the medications to increase my supply, it was gone. Just be aware that that can happen, some women have no issues with solely pumping, others do have issues.

Well done, for at least having the right thought and wanting to BF or use EBM (expressed breast milk) and asking people out there who do have experience as in todays world, we all need to go back to work at some stage!