I bf my little girl, but stopped after 3 months through exhaustion and the fact that i had soooo much milk, my (.)(.) were so sore and heavy... Anyway, it hasn't put me off enough not to do it this time, and i will bf for the first couple of months anyway... but i'm thinking of buying an electric breastpump, and then moving my wee man onto ebm from a bottle instead - do you think that this is feesible? My reasons for considering this are 1. dh/relative/friend etc can also feed baby, mosre so dh doing nightfeeds 2. i can express my milk when suits me and get my (.)(.) letting down milk only when i choose, i.e. not through the night mostly! lol..

Not sure if i will do this, but it's an idea that's been going round my head for a while, and since bm keeps in a fridge for 5 days, and a freezer for 6 months, i don't see why i wouldn't always have enough, plus my baby will still be getting all the goodness from the breastmilk..

Any thoughts on this?

Either way as long as yr little one is getting yr BM then its what you feel comfortable with. Another thing to think of is that if yr one of those lucky ones that produces ALOT of milk you could think of donating some to the special baby unit if you have one near you they always want BM for babies whos mothers who cant BF. Well they do in my area anyway!! Good luck with yr choice! xx

My baby wouldn't latch on...still won't and I exclusively pump. I can tell you honestly that I would give just about anything to have him latch on....it would be a lot easier. First thing you must remember is that pumping takes time. For me, my OH works and it's just me and LO a lot and pumping and taking care of him can be hard at times. Plus I have to wash and sterilize bottles everyday, sometimes twice a day, which takes up more time. My breasts still leak and get VERY hard and sore during the night, I have to wake to pump sometimes as they hurt quite badly. And of course it's frustrating to go out and do things sometimes...as I have to pack up the right amount of BM and figure out how much room temp, how much cold, where I can warm it up. Also if I'm going to be gone too long, need to bring the pump, figure out a place I can pump etc. You need to be quite diligent with the pumping or your milk will decrease.
Anyway, just wanted to point out somethings you may not have considered.
Good luck with whatever you choose!

I am going to breastfeed babba and also express breast milk into bottles so that other people can feed her too, mainly because my hubby wants to feed her so that he feels he's getting some intimacy with babba.
He thinks I'm getting all the fun and doesn't want to be missing out.
Plus, it'll be easier and cheaper to take breast milk with us when we go out and I have don't have to breastfeed in public which I really don't fancy!!

Andrea xx

I've done this with both my children and plan to do this with this one...I always use a breast pump...I love it!!!!

do you use an electric pump? Do you find it quick?

im currently doing it now
My first two children i struggled through and could never express either by hand or with manual pump. This time i got a medela swing.
Its been a heaven send. My nipples got sore about day 3 roughly the same time the filled up and my LO could not latch on they were so stretched, so i switched the the pump.
I have been expressing a few feeds a day just to give my nipples a rest and also gives the other half and my other children a way of joining in feeding

my baby didnt latch on partly due to prematurity but i also preferred just expressing and storing. I do this exclusively now.

Nothing wrong with that and many mums who left the neonatal unit do it, may as well use it if you have it.

Just make sure you express about every 3 hours and keep up. It may be hard at first because babies are time consuming but push on.

I also asked the neonatal staff the other day if it was safe to express before LO arrived, and they say yes, and more people do this than you think!

I'm an expresser too - my little one had surgery at a day old and was tube fed initially. I tried the breastfeeding when he was ready to take food orally but I was kinda left to it and not really shown how to do it etc, and it just didn't work for us so he is bottle fed EBM now. I still think i want to perhaps give it another try, perhaps get some nipple shields and try it that way. As has been mentioned above, it's a bit of a nightmare really keeping up with the expressing and warming up bottles, sterilising etc. It's like you're doing it all twice... expressing the milk and then feeding the milk whereas with straight breastfeeding it's all done in one go!

There are many women who exclusively express and do so until their child is 1 so it is certainly possible! and as others have said, your LO is getting the goodness & thats the most important thing!

If you are going to exclusively express, you need to start straight away and follow a strict schedule to build your supply. Great guide here:
http://www.hollister.com/us/files/pd...ilk_supply.pdf

I exclusively expressed for 8.5 weeks, and have been directly breastfeeding for 13 weeks. Directly breastfeeding is much, much, much easier in my experience.

To maintain my supply, I had to pump 8-10 times a day, for 20 minutes each side, every day.

It us quite easy to overfed a bottle fed baby, so it is wise to pace bottles.

I also found there wasn't much support from the health profession and they tried to talk me out of it.