When to first give expressed milk and feeding frequency

[CakeandRoses]

I feel a bit of a fraud asking such basic questions about bf, given I bf ds1 until 14 months (and he's only 21m now so it wasn't that long ago!)

I've just had dd (week old yesterday ) and want to avoid the bf mistakes I think I made with ds. Any help gratefully received:

Q: When is it best to first express milk and how best to give it to the baby (cup/bottle/etc)?

I don't think I left it that late (maybe a few weeks old) with DS but he outright refused to take a bottle, cup etc until he was weaned at 14m - and even then it took weeks before he started drinking whole cups of milk. If I left him with DH for a day, he'd just go without rather than drinking the expressed milk. This is despite the fact he'd happily glug away on a cup of water after 6m.

Q: When would you expect the baby to fall into a 3 hourly feeding pattern?

I'm worried (and feel guilty) that I expected this too soon with DS and sometimes thought he was being colicky when actually he was doing the natural sub-6week feeding frenzy/having a growth spurt and naturally wanted to bf all evening.

Really wish I'd had better support and info on this but because we took to bf easily at the start the HV etc left us to get on with it and didn't offer any advice about subsequent weeks/months. The books I read gave wrong info about getting into a 3 hourly routine too early.

Thank you so much for any info or advice you can give.

Hey, Congratulations on the birth of your daughter!

As far as expressing goes I would wait till you are in a three hourly routine bfore starting. Then you can time when you pump better so your breasts are full when you need them. If you see what I mean!

As for the routine. I can't remember how it was with DC1 (difficult I think!) But DC2 was a breeze from the start. She fed every 3-4 hours from the start. I knew how long she was capable of being awake for (30mins to an hour) then I'd put her in the pram in the garden and wheel her around till she fell asleep or take her up to her bed and give her a little comfort feed off to sleep.

She did cluster feed from roughly 4pm till 9pm up untill about 9-10weeks, when she would be of and on the boob and might dose for 10mins here and there.

Try try try to relax and go with the flow. You'll really stress yourself out if you worry to much about routines and expressing. It will all fall into place. Enjoy it all. You know they're only tiny for such a short time.