My baby is almost 8 weeks now and still nurses for an hour at a time most of the time. We are trying to stick to the 1.5-2 hours of wakefulness rule, so often there is no time for play before we need to begin the soothing to sleep routine. It's so nice when I give her a bottle of EBM as she can drink that in less than 15 minutes, have about 10 minutes upright to let her food settle, then play for 30-45 minutes before we start the soothing for her nap. If I could figure out how to express while she's awake without feeling like I'm neglecting her, I'd be very tempted to exclusively express, at least during the day, because 15 minutes of pumping and 15 minutes of feeding would be better than an hour + of nursing. I didn't mind at the beginning as she was so young, all they were "supposed" to do is eat, sleep, and poop, but now that she's getting older I can't help but feel that she's missing lots of valuable time when she could be learning/developing through play. This morning I gave her a bottle and then she spent 15 minutes cooing at me, which is the longest and most I've ever heard her coo.

I think she's not so efficient at getting milk out, or otherwise lazy, as she will fall asleep often (no matter how much tickling, stripping, etc., I do), and when she does take a bottle, I always can express more than she takes, almost like the pump is better at getting it out than she does. We've been to our local breastfeeding group numerous times and they say the latch is good and I have almost no pain now, so I think she's got it right.

Does anyone else feel like nursing is taking time away from other things that are also important for baby?

My advice would be to just stick with it - as she gets older she will get MUCH more efficient at feeding. Exclusive pumping is definitely not a time saver in the long run.

I was in the same boat. However, this week he just totally turned around. He finished eating in 20 minutes! At first it freaked me out because I thought he wasn't getting enough! Stick to it...it will get better!