Should u buy a breast pump before hospital or when u get home?

[Tobily]

They will probably try to tell you in hospital to give your baby some formula if s/he has jaundice...this seems to be the fairly standard experience and it happened to me with my DD. They still encouraged me to comp feed her even though my milk came in fairly quickly and I had TONS of it
If you don't want to do this no one can make you and there is no reason to. I was lucky, my DD was comp fed for a week but I didn't have any problem ditching the formula when I got her home.

RE the breastpump: I didn't buy one before my DD was born and I had to do a midnight run to the chemist to buy one because I was horrendously engorged - and DD was 4wks early, jaundiced and sleeping alot so I couldn't get her to feed enough to relieve it.
I took it to the hospital with my second baby and used it very sparingly to pump a little milk off to help him attach easier when my milk first came in. I expected to be really engorged again and I was.
Word of warning - be sparing with the pump. I caused myself HORRENDOUS oversupply problems pumping all the time with my first bub. I kept getting engorged, then pumping and of course then I would make more milk, get more engorged etc...it was a vicious cycle and ultimately I ended up giving up feeding when DD was only 2 months old. So you need to be a bit careful not to get too carried away with it.

[little sprocket]

That was another things I was going to ask too. My other cousin on the other side of the family was comp feeding from birth onwards. She would do breast,breast,bottle(formula). Is this a common thing to do and do hospital encourage that if your milk isnt coming in or your baby is really really hungry (Sorry here I go with the boobies again).

[Pandora]

My other cousin on the other side of the family was comp feeding from birth onwards. She would do breast,breast,bottle(formula). Is this a common thing to do and do hospital encourage that if your milk isnt coming in or your baby is really really hungry (Sorry here I go with the boobies again).

It depends on a number of things.
My milk did not come in til day 5, and DS did not attach well.
The oncall paed (who I never saw) wrote him up for comp feeds.
The midwifery staff and the LC's discussed it with me, and we chose to not give them to DS. I kept him with me the entire time. I was expressing (or attempting to) on a hostpial pump every 1.5 hours, and we were feeding this to DS.

It did help that he was 10lb 4oz and his 10% borthweight was a lot more than a small babies would have been.

I was quite comfortable with not giving him the comp feeds.
He was really really hungry. I believe all babies are, and (again my opinion)their cries help your you milke to come in and are a signal to your body
Babies stomachs are so tiny for the first few days, than he could get by on the colostrum and small amounts I was able to express.