Mixed feeding- reduced breast milk supply?

[Catspersonalbanker]

Had exclusively bf DD for 7 weeks but changed to mixed feeding as she was feeding for pretty much all the time she was awake and despite having LOTS of support could not make it work.

Was doing well over the last 5 weeks of mixed feeding- she had time to play and interact not just sleeping and feeding. However, I usually express a bottle in the evening for the next nights feed and my boobs are ususlly fit to bursting but yesterday could only get 3 oz and tonight only 2 oz when I usually get up to 5oz and my boobs are still soft.

What can I do to bring the supply back up? Have tried pumping for longer than the milk is present for but am wracking my brains for other things to do.

Oh and am also feeding from both breasts first thing in the morning.
Any ideas?

Thanks

I'm sure someone more knowledgable will be around soon but am I right in understanding that you are only feeding your DD once in the morning and expressing once in the evening?

I've been mix feeding DD2 (now 14 weeks) since she was 5 weeks old due to slow weight gain (despite feeding almost constantly too). Initially we were doing 3 bottles a day with BFs inbetween but this has slowly increased to 5 bottles with BF snacks rather than full feeds. I felt my supply was dwindling to almost nothing last week but I really want to continue for as long as possible, so I spent a day or so putting her to the breast as much as possible and also expressing every 2 or 3 hours. This has worked and my supply has increased - felt quite engorged on Saturday and I've been able to give DD proper BFs rather than just snacks inbetween bottles.

Would it be practical for you to try expressing a bit more during the day?

If you really want to continue to bf you need to increase the number of times your DD feeds at the breast. Expressing is not nearly as good at stimulating milk supply as direct feeding. As mejon suggests, you could spend a few days just feeding your DD from the breast as much as possible to get your supply up.

I realise that you probably don't want to go back to ebf, but it is probably still possible at this the moment. You could give top-ups of ff after a bf and gradually decrease the amount or use a supplementer.

if you are only feeding once a day, and expressing once a day then yes, your milk supply is likely to diminish fairly rapidly i'm afraid

what's happening to you right now is that your body is thinking "hmm, don't need to make all this milk, baby isn't feeding often" and it's slowing down and stopping.

if you want to increase your supply you need to be feeding baby more often

I found that when I was only giving one ff a day (and bf the other feeds) my supply wasn't affected. But when I went up to 2 ff (at around 5 months in anticipation of returning to work) my supply went right down.

I ended up not going back to work as soon as I expected to, and by increasing the amount and length of times I bf I was able to bring my supply up a little, but I didn't do it long enough to see a big improvement. I'm sure that if I had carried on though it probably would have come up again.

Try bf more often and for longer. Even if it doesn't have an immediate effect you should find that your supply does increase gradually.

Pumping isn't nearly as efficient as a baby for getting milk out, so it can be tough to maintain supply on pumping alone. You would typically expect to have to pump at least as often as baby would feed, if not more often to maintain supply.

And if you are only doing 1 breastfeed and 1 pump a day, your supply is likely to drop. All you can do to stop this is feed more often.