Bridesmaid and breastfeeding- help!

[LilacEmmy]

I'm a bridesmaid for my best friend in just under 3 weeks time when my daughter will be just 5 weeks old. I'm obviously very excited about the day and being part of it and seeing my friend getting married, but I'm also very distracted thinking about the logistics of how it's all going to work. I'm currently breastfeeding, and uncertain and nervous about how I'm going to manage feeding her on the day of the wedding- has anyone else been in a similar situation before, and if so, how did you get on? The dress I'm wearing is going to be impossible to breastfeed in without taking the whole thing off, so I'm planning to express milk on the day so my husband can feed her as/when I'm otherwise engaged with photos etc, but obviously haven't tried it yet as still getting established with the feeding. I was going to start her on a bottle or two in the week leading up to the wedding so she gets used to it? Then later on in the day once we're at the hotel, I can hopefully feed her in our room, so the bottles are more for the church/photos, and later on during dinner.
Another thing I'm concerned about is fitting my bridesmaid dress on, which I've been putting off up to now! Guess I'll buy one of those Spanx type knicker sucker inner things to wear for the day!!!
Any advice would be appreciated please!

You will need to express for comfort even if you don't feed your DD directly. So you need to work out ways to get time out of the dress whatever. Otherwise, you'll probably be in agony and leaking!

It will probably take you a while to build up enough of a stash of ebm to be useful, especially as you'll need to use some of the ebm in getting your DD used to a bottle. I would start expressing once a day now as regular small amounts of expressing are less likely to cause issues than trying to build up a stash in a short amount of time. You can freeze it for use later - use the frozen milk to try at home so that you have as much fresh, not defrosted, to take out as fresh ebm lasts a lot better than defrosted.

Could you possibly get a nursing dress in a similar shade to the bridemaids dress? MamaNana do pretty dresses.

Could a dressmaker make any alterations to the dress to make it easier for you?

I think you may struggle a bit if you don't express/feed your baby frequently throughout the day with her only being 5 weeks old. What style dress are you wearing as it may be easier to just feed her yourself to avoid leaking and getting engorged (and perhaps just have one or two bottles of EBM for if you are too busy to feed - such as in church or during photos).

I have always struggled to express milk (in that I can't always get a letdown), unless done first thing, so find it much quicker and convenient to BF (but that's just me). I'm lucky too as all three of my boys have been super quick feeders.

I've never been able to express much at all, so you might want to start trying now to see how you get on? It's going to be a bit of a juggling act expressing enough for the baby but not causing an oversupply though.

I'd bank on needing to express or feed at least every 3 hours during the day to remain comfortable and not leak too much - make sure you have a good supply of breastpads too!

Oh yes, re breastpads. Milk stains on bridesmaids dress = fashion suicide.

I totally know how you feel and that you're probably getting really stressed about it!! I attended 2 very good friends weddings whilst still breastfeeding my dd (at 8 & 10 wks) and was also a bridesmaid at a wedding where 2 of the other bridesmaids were breastfeeding (one had a 6 week old).

Agree that you should try to start expressing a bit every day if you can to build up a supply which you can freeze. I hated expressing and couldn't get much out but found that expressing a little bit at different intervals throughout the day really helped so that at the end of the day I'd have a good few ounces which I could freeze. When I tried to express 3oz at a time (which some friends could do!) it didn't work & was v annoying. I wouldn't try expressing whole feeds on the day to give to your husband as it could take you ages and you'd probably be better of just feeding your dd yourself.

When I bf at my friends wedding I wore a cardigan over my dress, pulled it down & just found a quiet corner during dinner (& having a friend come & chat to distract from what I was doing). Have your husband on hand to take your dd for a walk during the ceremony if she's hungry. You won't be needed for long for photos so sure you'll be able to sneak off and feed her if necessary and if there's nowhere to do it could you just use the car? I've got friends that have fed in the back of a church during the wedding ceremony - although I appreciate that if you're a bridesmaid you'll be sitting at the front so not so discrete!!

Def use breastpads! Try not to stress -remember that these things always work out better than you think.

I wouldn't go with the expressing, rather try and time feedings so you feed your baby right before the wedding so that your DH can look after her during it. Then feed her again when its a suitable time. At 5 weeks you will not be able to last much more than 3-4 hours between feeds anyway without risk of leaking.

When dd2 was this age I used formula for these types of occasions - as I was always hopeless at expressing and dd2 seemed to prefer formula from a bottle ebm was supposed to come from the breast only according to her!

I would start with a bottle now - just once a day to get your dd used to a bottlem - the earlier you start this the more chance you have of her taking a bottle.

DD1 would never ever on pain of starving drink milk from a bottle but I didn't try with her until she was at least 4 / 5 months old.

I second not bothering with expressing except maybe one bottle for emergencies during the ceremony. There is no guarantee your DD will take one (though as she's so young she probably will) and also I think it is possible that putting her on bottles for a whole day at that age could lead to nipple confusion, although I've never heard of this actually happening. You'll need to find time to express throughout the day for comfort/supply protection anyway so much much easier just to feed the baby. Be prepared though - at 5 weeks my DD was cluster feeding from 5pm to 9pm each night - unless you want to risk missing chunks of the evening I'd get a back-up outfit that you could change into after the ceremony/photos that you can easily BF in. Good luck and enjoy - I took DD to a wedding at six weeks and it was fairly hard work as I fed her every 90 minutes and then all the way home on the train - but hopefully yours isn't such a boob monster! But I will say it was preferable to faffing with bottles all day and having a screaming baby on the train!

Relax and just try to have a nice day. Def feed yourself and I agree take an emergency bottle of formula if you havent built up a stash of EBM.
Feed yourself because you don't want to risk mastitis and if your dress is tight, getting over full could lead to this ( not panicking you but giving a valid reason to feed yourself).
Take a dummy ! Practise using it a little before the day.
Make sure OH does lots of cuddling later on in the day with a dummy so you can keep dress on and take part. also usefulfor that evening cluster feeding mentioned.

If you are feeding well now there is no reason it will interfere with your day.
Do practise feeding with dress
Take a bed sheet to drape over you (babies not yours!!!)
Perhaps you can put a large t shirt on and drop dress to your waist so you don't actually have to leave the celebrations but find a corner.

Ignore everyone and remember they will get a bit pissed so might behave a little odd anyway to your sobriety.

Hope it goes well.

I just went through this myself last week for my sister's wedding where I was the Maid of Honour. DD was 7 weeks and a few weeks beforehand I started expressing and getting her to take bottles from DH since this was going to be important on the day. In fact the first test was leaving her with him for 4 hours when she was 5 weeks so that I could go and get my hair cut and highlighted (which was bliss) in advance of the big event! I had ordered my dress back in November and at the advice of the lady in the shop ordered a size larger than I wanted to which actually turned out to be WAY too big. I had it altered 2 weeks before the wedding and I didn't find that my boobs grew significantly after that. The wedding was in the US so we got our first transatlantic flight under our belts while we were at it. On the wedding day my husband took DD at about 2:30 pm right after I fed her while I was with the girls getting dressed and doing photos etc. He was armed with a cache of 4 bottles of about 3oz each that I had been working on for a few days beforehand. I had also given him a separate bag that contained my pump and all the gear to take with him to the wedding so I could relieve myself if I didn't get to feed her directly. The ceremony was at 6pm and as soon as the photos were over (most had been done before the ceremony) I was very lucky to find the disabled restroom was a fully enclosed room (ie private). As much as it wasn't the most elegant setting I took off my dress and pumped a full 5oz which was enough to get us through the rest of the evening and we had plenty of friends/family happy to watch her while I got prepared for my speech (yikes!). I even managed to have a few drinks and pumped again as soon as I got home. It actually worked out a lot better than I expected it to.

I got married when DS was 10 weeks. I had expressed milk, he only needed one bottle. It might have been 2 but I nipped off during the meal (much to my mother's disgust) as he wouldn't take a bottle off me and I was leaking.
Definitely make an effort to feed for relief and to save your dress. Change when the formal stuff is done. You may also be surprised to find you can wriggle a boob out if you loosen the zip a little.