Exclusive Expressers #2

[Astrolady]

Continuing on from here

[teesmum]

how's everyone going?

I keep my milk at room temp too. The most DS drinks at a time is 150ml so I keep that much out of the fridge. What ever he doesn't drink he gets next feed, as long as it's not out of the fridge for more than 8 hours. Has been fine so far (my lactation consultant said this was ok too).

just to clarify - if your little one doesn't finish a bottle, you reoffer it at the next feed if total time out of fridge is less than 8 hours? That would make life a bit easier, i tend to discard leftovers - well, i sometimes keep them for an hour or so but otherwise just chuck it. so good to know ok to keep it for longer.

my little miss is a little piggy-wiggy. She seems to be taking at least 1000ml/day, up to around 1200ml. driving me crazy and making me spend more time with my pump than i really want to lol. new found respect for those of you who have pumped feed by feed all along. till now, i always made heaps more than she made. now i struggle to get ahead. but at least she is feeding well

my dd has a huge sleep association with the bottle. thinking life would be easier if she develped a sleep assoc. with something else as well. but it is SO nice to have a baby that goes to sleep easily (ds, fully breastfeed, was not a great sleeper!). but she is due to have surgery for her cleft lip in a couple of months and i worry that she will be too sore to comfort feed.... guess i should ask others who have had kids go thru the surgery.

[Lisa B]

Hey there,

I did write a long post but then I lost it.

Wow your DD is drinking a lot. Maybe she is going through a growth spurt. My DS only drank that much a handful of times. Mostly he drank about 800mls. I hope the surgery goes well and that you can get BF established.

I'm down to 5 pumps from 8 (or 10 when I had low supply pre-motilium) so it feels a breeze now in comparsion. The drop in pumps hasn't meant too much of a drop in supply which I have been surprised about. I've probably lost about 100mls all up. I've decided to keep my middle of the night pump (4am) for now anyway. I'm enjoying the freedom during my waking hours, at the expense of a good night sleep.

I've always found occuping DS a challenge when expressing as he is so active and now with crawling is into mischief. I've taken to expressing during the day when he is either asleep or eating. I just leave him in his chair for an extra 10 minutes whilst I finish the pump.

DS is on 3 meals a day now and taking between 450-550mls plus I put a generous amount of BM on his cereal in the morning. I'm still making too much milk, perhaps because I"m on motilium. I make about 300mls more than I need. I will see if it settles down as I have only been down to 5 pumps for the last 5 days. If not I'm not sure what to do. I might have to reduce the 20mins to 15min for each session. Surely 4 pumps a day would have too much affect on my supply?? I don't want to stop the motilium because I know my supply is barely adequate without it.

I've almost reached my goal of 9 months. We are at 7.5 months right now. I can't believe I have gotten this far. I can reiterate what others have told me, it does get easier the other side of 6 months. The freedom of 5 pumps (4 during waking hours) is amazing. I can actually go places without too much clock watching

[Kmn]

Lisa - can you just drop the motilium a bit - from memory they make both 10mg and 20 mg tablets, so you could take it down very slowly until you got to that happy place where supply is a bit more than demand.

You can also reinstate a pump if you find your supply has dropped too far after dropping one - it will take a day or two to work, but it will work.

[Lisa B]

Kmn - is motilium dose related? I've been worried about dropping motilium because I know my supply would be barely there on 5 pumps. I barely had enough on 10 pumps

[Kmn]

You can have variable motilium doses - usually people "drop" motilium very slowly (10 mg per day per week or two), and see what happens - if it drops too far then you can go back to the higher dose.
How much are you actually taking?

[veus]

I don't know if this would help you re: storing in small quantities. The ABA website sells this thing called milk trays. Basically like long ice-cubes tray to
Store milk in 30ml lot I think. Good
Luck!


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[AlligatorsMum]

Hi

I'm hoping someone has some advice for me. I'm due to return to work in a month and I will be breastfeeding on my days off and giving the little guy EBM during day care hours. What I want to know is when to express etc on my three work days. I will be working tue-wed-thur 730am till 5pm. At the moment out schedule is

630-7am = wake up for morning feed
10-1030 = feed
130pm = feed
4pm = feed
6pm = dinner feed and bed

What I want to know is if I'm going to be doing it right if I express at 1030am, 130pm and 4pm? The 4pm feed is usually a snack/stocking up for overnight and sometimes he doesn't feed a heap but other times he has quite a bit. I intend to pump a full feed at 1030 and 130 but would u pump till empty at 4pm or would it be better to get hubby to tell me how much he has and pump that amount if possible? (hubby will have him at home by then.) I'm worried I'll pump too much at 4pm and won't have enough for his dinner feed?

Any advic would be great - also any tips on making pumping at work easier and more efficient wild be great.

TIA

[Lisa B]

Hi Minivini2b,

I didn't attach my son after 9 weeks and just expressed exclusively so I'm not absolutely sure about how much to express at that 4pm feed. I was doing a standard schedule of 20 minutes (double) every 3-4 hours when my son was 4 months old. If I had to do a 2 hour pump it would be less volume pretty much according to the time I pumped. Maybe this specific question might be good to post in the general expressing thread as the ladies there might have dealt this situation before.

In terms of making expressing work at work, that I do have some tips. It really depends on your set up at work ie: own private office, space available for privacy, need to drive or go to multiple sites etc. Double pumping and hands free is great. You can keep up with some basic emailing, phone calls (for a noisy pump I put it on my knees to soften the noise) or reading. This also helped me take my mind off the clock. Having a pump that is easy to transport if you need to travel or just getting it to work. I also stored the flange in a sealed plastic sandwich bag in the fridge so didn't wash at work. The bottles I stored in a small cool pack with ice packs. Tissues to wipe down the flange, boobs and any drips on your desk. Having my kit organised when I went off site (tissues, sandwich bags, cool pack). I sometimes had to express in the car (and believe it or not did express whilst driving on a few occasions) due to time pressures. On these days I had a baggy jacket so I could cover myself and parked somewhere discreet when attaching and removing the pump.

Good luck, it's an adventure!! Good on you for having a go at expressing whilst at work. It took me a few days to feel comfortable.

[AlligatorsMum]

Thanks Lisa - I didn't realise there was a general section will go to that and post for advice.

I don't think I'll be pumping At my desk lol I work for a private specialist so I am the receptionist and I'm not sure patients would want to walk in and see me pumping lol. But we do have a back room/ kitchen so I am hoping to pump out there and maybe just have a little sign so the other two girls know I am out there so to give me a little privacy. I think that will be fine. I think it's more the time it will take but I can normally get 120mls from one side under 10mins. I just have a single hand held pump ATM and will see how I go with that. If it becomes a hassle and I think a double would be easier I will look into purchasing one. I just dot want to waste the money if I don't need / or it doesn't work out. That is good to know about keepin flange in zip baggy - cuz I really didnt want to take sterilized with me to work lol! Do u keep all the pumped stuff in bags at work or just in one container? And there deal with it at home that night (meaning putting into "serving" sizes)?

[Lisa B]

ey there,

I just kept the milk in the bottles at work. The same ones I used with my pump. I would tip it into 1 or 2 bottles. BTW 120mls off one side in 10 mins is great!! At home I kept the milk in bottles in the fridge and then just tipped what I needed to into another bottle when required for a feed. I can't remember now how long BM lasts in the fridge, but if I thought I had more than I could use in a fridge I put it into BM storage bags in the freezer. I probably put more than others would into a bag, this led to a bit of wastage as the keeping time of thawed milk is less than fresh but i could afford some wastage as I did end up with a lot in the freezer.