A day away from my primarily breast fed baby

[sioba]

Hi,

I plan on spending a day bridesmaid dress shopping the week after next. This will mean not feeding my son from 7am on one day until his night feed the next morning - generally some where between 2 and 5am.

I primarily bf him but he gets a large bottle of formula (250ml) before bed every night after his bath at 7pm.

My questions are:

Will one day away cause any supply issues?
How engorged will I become? Does anyone have any experience of expressing in bathrooms/changing rooms etc?

Thanks a million

P.s. My son will be 3 months old when I leave him for the day.

I once left my 11 mo from early morning until midnight-ish and was in absolute agony when I got back. Had to wake him up to feed him. I can only think that a 3 mo will feed more often and it will be much worse.

Expressing seems to take ages and if you are in a changing room will not be easy to relax. Have you thought this through properly?

Are you expressing beforehand for him to have during the day? Have you got expressing sorted so that you can easily do it or are you still new to expressing? Are you going to have fridge facilities if you want to keep the expressed milk or are you planning on pumping & dumping?

I'm planning on pumping and dumping - I don't really have expressing sorted - rarely do it - can't seem to find the time.

I'm really keen to go away for the day both because it will be nice to have a day off and I've been a pretty crap bridesmaid so far - all my time is taken up with the baby.

I've done this several times (been away from my bf baby for significant periods) and you'll be fine, I think. Expressing is tedious, but if you do it when you're feeling engorged (don't leave it till you're really uncomfortable obviously) the milk comes out much quicker. You'll probably need to do it once or twice, depending on your tolerance for engorged boobs. And then again in the relative comfort of your own home. Talk to the bride about it first though and plan where you will do it. The last thing you want is to feel uncomfortable keeping people hanging around for you. For example if there's a department store that is posh enough that the toilets aren't too scuzzy, your friends (assuming here you're not the only bridesmaid) could go to the cafe while you spend 15 min in the loo. It's not glamorous, but it's perfectly do-able IME.

If you could be back to feed your son after his bath instead of giving him a bottle, that would obviously make it easier.

You will need to express otherwise you will hve really engorged breasts, expressing will keep your supply up, i hated expressing though it made me feel like i was being milked, and found it difficult to express when baby wasn't around, would you not concider takinDC with you?

I can't really take him with me - we'll be rushing from shop to shop and there will be a longish car journey there and back. I guess I'd better start having a go at expressing more often.

I did exactley this when DS1 was 8wks - I was bridesmaid for my sister and it was important to me to do it, so I understand where you're coming from. I also did it the other day with ds2 (who is 22wks so a bit bigger) as I had the day out without him.

I would agree that if you have in mind how often your DS feeds and try and plan your coffee breaks/lunch etc around this, so if you are feeling uncomfortable you can express then. Like a pp said, I found that if I was slightly engorged it was easier to express.

I would also suggest that instead of waiting to feed him you could maybe do a dream-feed before you go to bed around 11pm? This would mean the stretch that you are not feeding him is shorter.

Regarding your supply, the next day I did feel as if there was less milk. In fact with DS2 the other day I ended up topping him up with a bottle for one of his feeds as he was just not settling. Not ideal and it did make me worry i'd mucked it all up! But I would suggest that you make sure you have nothing planned for the following day so that you can keep feeding him frequently to get your supply back up and you should be fine!

Hope you enjoy your day! Don't do what I did and leave the expressing too late and end up leaking all over a v.expensive dress that I had no intention to buy - oops! Maybe make sure you have some sturdy breastpads on hand!

I did this went DS2 was 11 weeks.

I went to work for 2 days in a row, DS2 is EBF. Was even anxious if we would drink from a bottle!

I missed three feeds, roughly 10am, 1pm and 4pm but was back for feed at 6.30pm. I only expressed once at 1pm and was pretty full but def not engorged by then. If you are trying on dresses you do not want to be engorged.

I did feel it affected supply. I fed a lot (more often and longer feeds) in the couple of days afterwards and it took a couple of days to sort out.

re: the expressing, I expressed in the breastfeeding area in John Lewis in Oxford Street, which was fine and I kept the milk (put it in work fridge). I expressed around 6oz. It took around 45 mins but I could have relieved the fullness etc in around 10. I wanted to get out as much as possible as I could keep the milk and I wanted to keep supply up.

I would imagine you could get away with once in the day and then a 2nd time when you got home (and easy to keep milk from the second time).

I agree re: breastpads!

Oh yes, spare breastpads essential. Forgot about that.