Exclusive Expressers

[Glamourcide]

Wow, glad to see there are more ladies out there like me!!
I had issues with attachment and amounts of milk with DD (suffered a PPH after her birth and was hooked up to IVs etc which made it hard for me to hold her for the first few days), she's always had a huge appetite and for the first week or so, until my milk came in, I literally had nothing to feed her so I was giving her formula and expressing like mad to get the milk supply in, then feeding her half-and-half formula/breast milk.
I picked up a manual pump by Avent from Priceline the day I brought her home from hospital, and then I was using it for fifteen minutes each breast every three hours. It was reassuring to me to see exactly how much milk DD was getting, with Bfing you can't be sure and I never seemed to satisfy her, so feeding her from a bottle I could say with absolute confidence that yes, she was getting plenty. (right from birth she was drinking up to 90ml a feed, every two hours, which is a LOT more than other babies, so I knew I was right to worry about her getting enough, everyone was like, 'No, no, half an hour on each boob she'll be right' but she would just cry and cry and cry for more.)

I didn't take any supplements apart from the Elevit vitamins I'd taken during pregnancy, for me expressing frequently was more than enough to keep the supply up - my diet wasn't real flash but I tried to eat lots of healthy, home-cooked food to help keep the supply going.

I ended up slowing down and stopped altogether at 6 weeks, I was just so exhausted from getting maybe two or three hours' sleep in any 24 hours period, as DD was waking every three hours for feeds and I had to feed her, put her to sleep then express for over half an hour... I couldn't keep up and I knew it would be better for all concerned if I just weaned her and fed her formula so I could get some extra sleep. I wish now that I had persevered just another week or so because DD started sleeping right through the night at exactly 6 weeks old so if I had kept going we would have been right - my sleeping problems would have been solved.

I'm due to have another baby in late May and I'm seriously thinking about expressing again rather than BFing - it involved a little bit more work than BFing, but I've always had problems with very sensitive nipples (I can't wear a seatbelt without wearing a heavily-padded bra because if the seatbelt rubs it drives me to tears) and attempting to BF DD while in hospital was the most horrific experience ever - I was bleeding and swollen and my boobs hurt more than my poor down-below, if you can believe that after squeezing out an 8+lb baby!
I do want to do the 'right thing' by giving DD2 the nourishment of breast milk (and mum checked out the bottles I had expressed and declared it to be 'amazing' quality), but I just can't grasp the logistics of proper attachment and BFing in public, things like that. There is very little support for new mums in my area, the Community Health nurses are extremely rough and very critical, which doesn't help a fragile, hormonal and bewildered mum, and there is no support for women who don't 'try hard enough' and decide to express or formula-feed from birth, so I'm pretty much going it alone. Somehow I'm made to feel that I'm not a 'proper' mother because I don't latch bub on to the boob, but I figure as long as she's getting breastmilk, it's the same thing whether it's direct from my breast, or from a bottle, right? It didn't impact on my bonding with DD at all, and it helped her to bond with other family members (DH especially, and my parents) because they could nurse and feed her any time they wanted to (or any time I needed ten minutes' sleep!!) without depriving her of BM.

I'm actually thinking very seriously of splurging and buying one of those electric or whatever pumps that basically do all the work for you? If anybody has any advice on those over manual pumps, I'd be very grateful as the manual pump obviously was a lot of work and I'd like to do anything that will help make the job just that little bit easier. For instance, with the manual pump I had to wait until DD had gone back to sleep because I couldn't hold her and pump at the same time, but hopefully the electric pumps will free up an arm for me so I can do things?