Is it going to hurt?!

[Pootle78]

Breast feeding was always a bit on a non starter for us, I think caused mainly by an infection that ds had since birth but wasn't picked up til he was 5 weeks old. So I expressed from him being 3 days old until the week before he was 6 months old. He had 3 ebm and 2ff bottles a day.

At 4 months old I started to think about stopping expressing and thought of ways to do it so the first try was to get ds to latch and to my surprise, he was quite happy to take breakfast so dropped one express. A month later I dropped another express as he was happy to take his late afternoon feed from me.

And then 1 evening when he wouldn't go to bed til 1am I decided it was too late to express and that was the last express dropped.

So I am currently down to 2 bf a day and want to drop them completely as he has decided there are far more exciting things in this world than taking his feeds from me and his morning and afternoon feeds are taking longer and longer (up to an hour) whilst he explores what is around him (he is fed in the same room, in the same position for the last 3 months!) and all I seem to do is be feeding him, especially now when trying to add solids in between feeds!

So today he had his breakfast and has had bottles for the rest of the day. I know dropping 2 feeds straight away is likely to cause a lot of pain and discomfort so I want to stagger it and drop the afternoon feed and then once my boobs have settled down drop the breakfast feed.

So it's 14 hours since he fed and the longest I have gone without expressing or feeding. I think I am getting some pain (can't decide if it's psychosematic or not!) so do I go with it and hope I can sleep tonight, hand express a little to take away the pain (will that affect the morning feed) or something else?

Thanks

[lilham]

I think hand express some away would help with the engorgement. Even if you use a pump it'll be less efficient than a baby. So your body will adjust to make less milk.