Day away from 9 wk old - expressed BM or F?

[msbossy]

My DD will be 9 weeks when we are having my best friend's hen day. Events start at 1pm and finish late in the evening. It's a fairly sedate affair but I want to participate as much as possible.

DD is currently 5 wks and EBF. feeding every 3 hours during the day. With some cluster feeding in the evening we manage a 5-6 hour stretch at night (vv fortunate I know!). DH and both DDs will stay at the B&B so I can do early evening and early morning feed and get to them quickly if there are problems.

I have been working hard to get my fast let down and over supply under control and have been successful. Result is that I'm a bit nervous about expressing and recreating an oversupply problem that gives DD colicky symptoms.

For the couple of feeds I won't be able to do, what harm would formula do? If I miss 2-3 feeds one day how long might my supply be reduced for? WWYD?

You may well find you'd need to express to make yourself comfortable anyway if away from your DD for that many hours - would it be just as easy to nip back and feed her? Not sure about the ff as have never given any but I do understand your worries about expressing and over suppy (I had this problem as I started expressing far too early and just willy nilly rather than adding in an expressing session to my day as an extra feed iyswim).

If it was me I'd see if there was any possibility of feeding her myself, especially given your oversupply issues, you can always leave some expressed milk just in case of emergencies too. I doubt changing things for a few hours will impact on your supply and you can always make sure you feed feed feed the next day to make up for it, its probably a suck it an see situation really. Does your DD take a bottle? Stupid question probably but my DS never has so couldn't have done ebm or ff even if I'd wanted.

Good luck and sorry if I've not really been any help. I'm sure someone more useful will be along soon.

I made the same mistake of expressing too soon with DD1 and ended up going to formula completely at 8 weeks! Hence my paranoia this time. Thank you for the suggestion of setting a regular expressing time - that seems a good way to minimise the impact.

I think I'd miss big chunks of the day if I decided to do all the feeds. It's so difficult to predict whether she'll be in more of a routine by then (early routines are another mistake thing I've decided to bypass this time!)

I haven't even tried a bottle yet so I may not be left with a choice!