Is there a way I can express more milk. Baby is 5 months old.

[beatie]

My dd2 is 22 weeks old and she's exclusively breastfed. She was a nightmare sleeper between 11 and 21 weeks. Up until this past week she was waking up every two hours and I was feeding her back to sleep.

We put her into her own room last week and her sleep got much better. The first night she just woke once between 10pm and 7am. Since my feeding her was suddenly reduced, I was able to express a lot of milk, and I started to have DH give her a dream feed of appx 6oz of ebm between 10 and 11pm. This resulted in dd2 sleeping until 6 or 7am!

Nice! She did this for the past week, but of course, my supply has gone down again, and I yesterday I struggled to express 6oz over the course of a day, and tonight it look slike I'll be lucky to have 4oz.

I was expressing in the morning; whilst feeding dd2 at 6.30pm and again at around 10pm. I had no joy with the 10pm expressing last night and tonight, whilst feeding dd2, I got 2 oz instead of 4.

Is there any way I can improve upon this or do I need to go back to feeding dd2 myself between 10 and 11pm? I was enjoying being 'off duty' come 7pm.

Any tips?

[beatie]

Anyone?

[fastasleep]

Your hormone levels for producing milk are at the highest in the very early morning and late at night, for the best results when expressing gor for something like 3am... but that's silly when you want sleep and that's the whole point, so I'd go for either a 6 am pump or an 11pm pump, if DD is not there you need to express from each breast for about 15-20 minutes (for best results) switch from one breast to the other whenever the milk flow stops or gets very sluggish, just do a general timing of 30/40 mins on the clock, or stop if you aren't even getting droplets anymore.

It's good to massgae your breasts before expressing and to gently hold the breast and squeeze and slide your hand towards the nipple while expressing (difficult when holding a child at the same time though)

have you tried hand expressing? A lot of poeple find that gets more milk than other ways...

You could also try fenugreek tablets, which will up your supply, but you'll have to do the longer pumps in the morning/night to keep it up... and you'll stink like maple syrup, and I mean stink!

[fastasleep]

Also make sure you're relaxed! I find not thinking about it, and watching tv or attempting to read a book (with no free hands lol) helps me to get more

~FA the queen of expressing~

[mcmum]

5 years unfortunately since i breast fed - but did it successfully for 2 yrs. i used to get most of expressed milk whilst feeding during the night , i would express from free breast whilst dd was feeding and just alternate sides as she was feeding sound a pain but was no trouble infact i really miss it - i miss that slurping suckling noise and look of blissfull happiness when she would fall off asleep stuffed ! enjoy it while it lasts goes too quickly

[beatie]

Thanks - I'll give the massage and hand expressing a go and try to express a little later for the evening express.

[beatie]

Just to update..... I started to express later in the evening and as soon as I got out of bed (rather than after breakfast and a coffee) and I have managed to get 7oz + the past two days. It looks like I should be able to maintain the one bottle feed per day that DH does.

[beansprout]

I always expressed very first thing in the morning and could get 6oz in about 20 minutes. Couldn't do that at any other time. Once this is routine, your body will produce the amount you need as it all works on supply and demand and this is now your "demand".

[mcmum]

well done beattie [smile[

[mcmum]

OOPS