Exclusive Expressers

Just wondering how everyone is going....
Anyone here still expressing?

Hi Jasp, how are you? I finished up on Belle's first birthday. If I ws bfing I would have kept going past 12 months, but ee is just so hard! I felt a bit guilty stopping (I don't really know why) but it was a huge relief. My boobs were killing me by day four, but went down after that. I still have some milk now so not sure when they will dry up completely. How's the ee going for you?

Hi Jas :D.

I EE for DD1 until she was 11 months old, my supply dropped when I fell pregnant so I slowly weaned. Since DD2 was born (1 month ago today) I have been expressing again. I am feeding both girls EBM through bottle and they both also have naso-gastic tubes. DD2 is taking some milk direct from the breast but it is only about 100mls per day. At the moment my goal is for DD2, to get her havig all oral feeds either breast or EBM bottle to be able to remove the naso-gastric tube then my next goal is to feed completey by breast and wean the bottle. I think I will continue to express though as I have a great supply and I really would like to continue feeding DD1 EBM as long as I can, I was so upset that I stopped expressing when I did at 11 months, I wished I had continued.

I have to go for now DD2 has woken up... I will be back.

Claire, 12 mths is a fantastic amount of expressing! It's my secret main goal :lol: you should be so proud! I can imagine what a relief it was to give it up though.
I can't imagine what it must feel like to be free :p Do you think you felt guilty becasue you were relieved about stopping? I already feel a bit bad because I am so looking forward to the day I stop. I try to focus on why I'm doing it though...

DaintreeDream how wonderful to be tandem feeding EBM! That is so special :) especially considering how long you EE for the first time, to be doing it again now... that is amazing :clap: I don't know how you do it with 2 little ones!

AFM, I have been struggling a bit lately but feeling settled again now.
I posted about it HERE
So I feel all good with it again now, Arlea will be 6mths this weekend & I will have reached my first goal...onwards to the next one! 12 mths is my main goal (9 months is my 'escape' clause if it all gets too much :lol:)

Just wanted to pop in and say well done jasp making it to 6 months! EEing is such a tough road and you have done a great job!

Thanks Ezymay :)

So, we have hit 7 months :dance:
My pump bit the dust last weekend :doh: but I was lucky enough to find a hire pump that morning.
$55/ month is not too bad. Cheaper than formula...which I have tucked up my sleeve as a comeback for all the IRL people who will ask why not quit now that the pump is dead :lol:
It does bug me that I feel I have to resort to those kind of 'arguments'... why can't it be enough that BM is good for babies, and if I can provide it for her, I will...
I had a discussion with a friend the other day who seemed a bit puzzled by the fact that I was still doing it. And my mum has started suggesting that I think about ending.
It's like once we hit 6 mths, people aren't so understanding, they think a great start is enough. Whereas I feel that a great start is great but it doesn't have to end there... why not keep going if you can?
DH, bless him, is still supportive - I know he would like me to stop, but he is allowing me to make the choice. I think though that 12 months will be enough for him, and TBH I think it will be enough for me too. I am still getting through taking it week by week (sometimes day by day!)

I am wondering, for those of you who went past 7 - 8 months, at what point did you drop pumps... how many were you doing at around 7 - 8 months? I know the obvious answer would be to be guided by her feeds, but she is still very irregular. I estimate she would be having 4 - 5 bottles a day, anywhere from 100 - 200ml at a time.
I would love to drop another one but worry about my supply.

I have dropped the overnight pumps, which has dropped my supply quite a bit... I was lucky that I had quite an oversupply. I go 8 hours overnight now & express around 600ml first thing in the morning, but after that it decreases steadily throughout the day. I am expressing 4 hourly through the day, so 5 pumps in total, the last one around 10pm...it takes me about 30 - 40 minutes to empty my bbs so I get to bed around 11... a bit late for me but better than getting up overnight.
AR is still waking for feeds overnight though :( and up around 5-6am - I am worried that if my supply drops further, I won't have enough to last her overnight...

I guess I could try it for a week & see how it goes, if it drops too much I would just have to pump more again...would that work? The last thing I want is to have to stop cause I killed my supply :rolleyes:

Wow big post, I guess I had a lot to get off my chest :lol:

Well done if anyone managed to read all that!

Your supply won't be permanently "killed". The worst case scenario is that AR gets food and water and a bit less BM for a day or two and you get to go back to pumping 3 hourly for a day or two.
It will be annoying but not a disaster.

Thanks Kmn.
I dropped to 4 pumps on Wednesday, and so far so good.
I actually didn't realise how much milk I still had - almost 2L a day. I thought it was much lower :doh: now I feel silly.
Anyway. So I really need it to drop a bit at this point, it's just I think that right from when AR was born, I had it drummed into me to express, express, express & protect my supply, which has worked beautifully for my supply but I"m finding that mind-set a bit hard to get out of.

So atm I am expressing at about 5:30am, 11am, 4pm & then 9:30pm.

It's working sooo much better, previously I was having to express at around 6pm which is a really awful time of night to be pumping, it's AR's dinner time, we have football practice, dancing, dinner...
last night i pumped at 4, then I had time to do stuff! fed AR, bathed her & put her to bed :) DH had done this 9 times out of 10 for the last couple of weeks. Much happier all around :D

yikes - you could pretty much feed the family with that supply!
glad things are a bit better.

lol, yeah a bit silly to worry , wasn't it? I just didn't realise.
It has dropped a bit today but I am thinking that is a good thing :D

Fleur - I've been meaning to post & ask how it's going? great to hear you've managed to reduce your expresses a bit with no problems. It is such a mindset that we get into isn't it! I found dropping from 4 to 3 pumps was soooo liberating too. I agree with what Kmn said, if you find your supply is dropping too low, you can always up it for a day or so - I found by 7-8 months my supply was so entrenched that it really didn't drop much at all. And if your goal is 12 months, soon you'll be able to freeze extra that will help you to start to cut down at the end. (Like the new name btw)

DaintreeDream - expressing again, you are just such a star! It sounds like you have such a great plan in place for DD2, how is it going now?

Claire_A - congrats on a great job! I'm impressed you were able to stop so quickly, I was petrified of mastitis and took way too long to stop I think, oh well. I don't miss it I must admit.

AFM, well i'm pregnant again, so my thoughts are turning towards BF'ing and expressing and all that goes with it as you can imagine. We shall see what this time brings. I know I'll definitely be doing some exclusions from my diet if I get another snuffly mouth-breather like DS. I'm so determined to try and BF this time, knowing just how very much work EE is, but equally am petrified that it may not work again... ah well, we'll see. Cross your fingers for me pls!

Congrats to you all again :grouphug:
Belfie

Belfie, I have everything crossed for you, for an easy BFing journey!

I was thinking of you the other day & wondering how you were.

Well Arlea will be 8 months tomorrow & I am sitting pretty at 4 pumps a day :lol: now I am starting to think about when I might go to 3. Another month maybe?

My supply didn't drop all that much - or it was higher than I realised maybe - I am expressing around 1700 - 1900 ml / day. So I guess I will have to think about weaning down soon-ish.

! Belfie your post just made me realise!
Another month, and I will be able to freeze the rest of the way through!! :o - because up to now I have been thinking well, there's no point freezing, cause I can only keep it 3 months - so I have been donating everything - but I will be able to put some aside!
That of course solves the problem of how I reduce my pumps but still give her enough milk - Geez you'd think I'd realise this earlier :redface:

3 pumps per day :dance:

I kind of ended up dropping a pump by default - I had a few days where it was really hard to fit it all in (makes me wonder HTH I ever did it 3 hourly?)
anyway I have done 3/day for the last 3 days.
I am having a bit of an issue with fullness, I really need to reduce my supply but otherwise all good, so much extra time!
I think I will do this until 10 - 11 months and then maybe go to 2 a day.
I think the way I am doing it I won't actually be weaned until just after 12 months, maybe 13-14?
*:shhh: don't tell DH :lol:*

Ooh Fleur, big BIG congrats to you, that's just wonderful :clap::clap::clap: and I promise to keep it a secret from your DH too. I do remember mine staring at me in bemusement when I first dared mention something about the crazy 12 mth goal!

And doesn't 3 pumps a day just feel SO liberating? Your plan to reduce sounds good - remember it took me YONKS to wean because my supply probably was artificially high (and to think I started with it low). I would imagine you could easily drop to 2 pumps a day 6 weeks before the 1yr mark (especially given you'll probably have freezer supplies too).

Thanks for your well-wishes for my BF journey. Sometimes I feel petrified and sometimes I feel I can't wait to apply everything I learnt in my loooonng EE journey... but time will tell and of course every bubba is different too! The PG is going very well though which is a great start. We were out with friends the other day and she pulled our her yellow medela bottle of EBM... omg it brought back memories. And even X stared at it rather intrigued :rofl:

Anyway pls do keep me updated, I love to hear how you're going. And once again, gosh, what a star you are! :hug:
Belfie

Hi all,

Jumping on board with all you exclusive expressers - so excited to have found some of 'my kind'. :)

I have a 5 week old and I have expressed exclusively since day 4, and have tried about 6 breastfeeds in that time. I want to go back and read this thread, but I have a few questions that I'd really like your thoughts on.

(Background... bfing was excruciating for me in hospital, to the point where I didn't want to feed my baby. So I ended up on the pump. Hired a lactina for 4 weeks and last week got a freestyle. It seems that baby was doing everything right - the pain wasn't from incorrect attachment. I treated myself for thrush just in case, but that didn't seem to do anything. Have had some probs with getting the correct size breastshield - have gone to the 30mm which seems a lot less painful than the 24mm. Expressing isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but generally heaps less painful than breastfeeding).

Ok. Yesterday I saw a LC and she told me that I wouldn't be able to express long-term and that I would end up having to use formula. I was pretty upset. I felt like she couldn't tell me precisely why it wouldn't work, and I was really confused because I've found people online who have managed it for 1 year +. So my first question is, is this really possible to do for a year or more?

We tried a bf with the LC, which went ok but wasn't my idea of pleasant. That was 3pm. Then at home I fed at 6:30, which was a bit more painful. He went to bed at 7:30 and work at 11:50. We did a bottle and a bf, which was very painful (I was in tears and I had trouble getting back to sleep because my nipples hurt so much). He then woke at 4 and I tried a bf, which was again more painful. Woke at 5:30, tried again, and ended up giving a bottle at 6:30. You get the picture. This is from a baby who frequently sleeps 7 hours when having EBM. When I was feeding him he kept pulling off, even though I couldn't see anything wrong with the attachment, and he was definitely hungry.

Finally went to sleep at 9am... and as I write has just woken at 10:10.

I feel like the bfing has made everything a nightmare, and that it's just too painful for me to do 6 or 7 times a day. But I'm scared that the LC is right - that I'll run out of milk in a couple of months.

Would love to hear thoughts from all you experienced expressers!

Thank you for reading! :)
Surprised (or should that be 'Stressed'!)

I think you need to work your way into this BF thing a bit more slowly. Try two feeds a day for a week with the rest EBM and see how you go! Then increase to 3 and so on.
Experiment with feeding lying down and with other holds too. And badger the LC until it doesn't hurt any more!
I'm guessing from the rest of your post that you have big-nipple-little-mouth issues. Bub will grow, so this will get better. In the meantime you want him to practise BF-ing so that he still knows how to - and you want to not be too sore yourself.
Maintaining supply while expressing is much harder than while suck-feeding. It usually requires middle-of-the-night expressing which isn't much fun. Expressing is also much more of a fiddle - so if you can avoid long-term expressing that is a good thing.

If it were me... first off, I'd be finding a new LC ;)

I saw a few & all were supportive of long-term expressing. It's certainly not ideal, it is hard work & you might find supply issues down the track, BUT to say flat out that you won't be able to do it is absolute BS & not very supportive.
Belfie did it for 12 months, and apart from the girls here, I know of at least three or four other women IRL who long-term expressed. So we might not be common, but we're out there :)
My aunt did it for 18 months, I am aiming for 12 (almost 9 months now).

KMN has some good advice ( as usual ;)) - I wouldn't be giving up altogether on the BFing yet. It can take quite a bit of work to get it working for you but is well worht the effort when it does come together.
And it's a good point re. the overnight pumps - I expressed overnight for the first 6 months and it was really tough. It's (expressing) not very convenient in general, either :p
I think it's a pretty good idea as KMN said to maybe do one or two BF a day & the rest EBM, less stressful for you. But I would be very reluctant to give up on BF altogehter just yet.

All of that aside - if it's the way you decide to go, it is absolutely do-able.
The hospital LC's drilled it into me that I had to express every 3 hours, which gave me a great supply which I have been able to maintain throughout (not that I have expressed 3hourly throughout) so frequent expressing is really important, your milk supply is hormone driven I think for the first 6-8 weeks, tehn it works on supply & demand. It's really helpful to have an established supply at that point .

You'll learn heaps from this thread (I did!) and there will always be someone to offer advice or suggestions.

Good luck , let us know how you go :hug:

How are you going, Surprised?