Any ideas why i cant express much any more [sad]

[nannyl]

I have an 8 week old baby who is exclusively breast fed.

In the early days i had so much spare milk it wasnt funny... i leaked about 1oz per feed (into shells ; 10oz ish a day!) I had donated about 5 pints to SCBU (as my freezer was full) not to mention the stuff i spilt etc etc

anyway since she was about 3/ 4 weeks i expressed using my medala swing every morning. (I had herd dripped milk didnt contain as much fatty goodness so wanted some "proper" milk just in case)

Some nights she would feed for hours in the evenings and i would top her up with some of my dripped / expressed milk.... all fine

2 weeks ago (after 1 eveing where i fed her pretty much constantly from 5pm - 10pm, and had enough / felt like a cow / was resentlful of the fact i could do nothing all evening (& looked after her all day etc etc) we decided to give her her whole 6.30pm ish feed in a bottle (6oz) which she has been having since.

all was fine and i continued to use my medala swing, and express while she was being fed her bottle by daddy, as well as first thing in the morning...

then a few nights I was too tired to dream feed (so i didnt bother she slept til 3am) and expressed again last thing too

all was fine, i was getting 8 - 12oz of milk per day.

I felt like my swing was being over worked so i have invested in a medala freestyle.... a hospital grade, all singing / dancing hands free double electric pump, which i got on Monday.
(I also felt i hadnt been getting quite as much from my swing as id used to)

since then i have barely got more than 2oz of a breast in a session, normally nearer 1oz . Today, with the freestylei have got the grand total of 5oz of breast milk

I cant imagine why it has dropped so much.... even 1st thing this morning when my breast felt so full i thought it would pop i got less than 2oz. (would have got 3 - 4oz with the swing i reckon) (my friends report getting 6 - 8oz 1st thing with their pumps.... why cant i?)

Im fast going to run out of milk i think.

also for the past 3 nights my daughter has has a 6oz bottle for her dream feed too (I have been in bed early so had much needed unbroken sleep until 5am ) but im not expressing enough milk to enable this to happen now

i dont know what to do or why.

(I eat very well and drink loads and loads and loads and loads)

any ideas?

5oz is loads!

I think as your supply adjusts to your baby, expressing just becomes harder to do. It's like your boobs get stubborn and insist that they aren't producing unless it's for the real thing.

I do know that it is not in any way an indication of supply, although of course it's difficult if the reason you are expressing is to provide a regular feed for your DD.

I wonder if it is because you are missing that late night feed, as she is so little, and you've gone from basically cluster feeding a lot to suddenly getting a long stretch of sleep, and the expressing to make up for this is happening at another time. It may have been too sudden a change. If this is the case I'm certain that you could build it up again, but I think you'd have to keep expressing at a certain time to create the demand if that makes sense. I'm sure others could help more with this. You say that your breasts feel very engorged in the mornings, which is normal at 8 weeks, but I'm wondering if this is happening more so as a result of the combination of cluster feeding (which would have upped the demand for milk) followed immediately by a reduction in demand. Perhaps it would be a good idea, although it would disturb your sleep, to wake up and pump during the night for a few days and then gradually move this pumping session forwards until it happens when you wake up, or backwards so you are doing it before bed. I would probably actually just co-sleep, but that's me and I appreciate you may not want to do this!

Have you tried going back to the swing? If the decrease has been directly linked, your new pump could be faulty, or perhaps just not a good fit for you (I'm sure different pumps must suit different women)

Because your body is extraordinarily clever and has worked out how much milk your baby needs.
p.s 'dripped milk' is the same stuff as pumped milk. Freeze it/store it/use. it's just as good. :)

Strangely, my milk dried up when I expressed. Only actual feeding re-produced milk, but thought it was just me. ( loved your Freudian herd typo!)

babies are much more efficient at getting milk out than pumps. They get out in minutes what it takes pumps ages to produce.

so does this mean the answer is to just keep making baby suck it out?

i really really really want her to have at least 1 daddy bottle per day....

(my 5oz that ive expressed today has been over 4 pumping sessions)

I am going to put my hand pump next to my feeding chair and hand pump while i do my night feed tonight..... and see if i get more than 1oz with that!

might get my swing back out tomorrow too and see if i get more than i did today...

Could the bottle be given at a different time of the day? Even if just for now while you're working through this blip?

Have you tried pumping from one side while she feeds from the other?
Is there any reason you want your DH to give her a bottle.

I was all set on my DP giving LO a bottle per day too, lasted 2.5 months before I got bored of the sterilising and pumping. I realised that LO actually preferred the breast and that DP could bond with baby in other ways - bathing (perhaps even together for skin on skin), playing, daddy walks etc. It wasn't long before baby became 6 months and was able to throw food eat with daddy.

Good luck with your pumping, I hope you manage to get the amount you need, otherwise if dropping the breast at that time of day is a definatley what you could mix the expressed with formula to top it up.

Daddy-baby bathtime is lovely for bonding, especially if they get in together :) Was the only way DS would bath for his entire first year. Even now he prefers DP to bath him than me (DP not his Dad). Maybe I'm just rubbish at baths...

OP are you sad? Stress and unhappiness can lead to a reduction in breastmilk.

No that's a myth - emotions can't affect your supply. Severe stress has been known to affect letdown, but that's another thing entirely.

im not sad.... although seeing my milk production decrease dramatically doesnt make ma happy

i hand pumped while i fed her at 3.30 and got 1.5 oz

this morning i have got 2oz, so better than yesturday
but still wont be making 2 bottles a day

i like Daddy to do a bottle and also Daddy likes to do a bottle.
He does bath and bed while i relax sort washing / cook dinner /catch up on washing up etc

My issues with that feed is that in the past (2 weeks ago) it was taking ALL evening for her to take enough milk to get to sleep and i felt all i did all evening was feed. (often for 3 hours + so no time for dinner etc etc)

I guess 2 weeks is along time in an 8 week olds life though so i could try again, but i just cant face spending all evening every evening feeding her. Doing that did / will make me unhappy...

Hi OP.
When I used to express in the mornings while feeding ds1 I think I got 2-3oz max. I used to worry I wasn't producing much but as other posters said babies are far more efficient at extracting milk. A friend of mine would get loads but she was pumping and feeding practically all day due to a poor latch. It is just supply and demand. If you are feeding less over 24 hours then your supply will adjust accordingly. I also found that mornings were the most productive times for me. By the evening I would struggle to get more than 1 oz. Good luck

The evening cluster feeding is a pain, but it doesn't last forever. It's hard to give a time scale because all babies are different. I suppose it depends how long you could cope with it for. We've all been there eating meals one handed with a muslin over the baby so you don't drop bits on them!

In addition to this she'll soon be 3 months which is often quite an unsettled time, whether they are FF or BF. DS just wanted someone to stand up with him at this point for the whole evening which was a pain and meant we really did have to eat in shifts. I'd rather have done more cluster feeding! For most babies the unsettled period - either being colicky, wanting to be held constantly, or wanting to feed a lot - settles down by about 4 months. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear ATM.

Mixed feeding (whether a mix of ebm + bf, ff + bf or all three) can work but if you want to make it work you'll probably need help from someone who knows more. It might be an idea to start a new thread with "mixed feeding ebm" somewhere in the title to attract people who know more on that particular topic. As I understand it if mixed feeding is going to work you need to be cautious about when and how you introduce bottle feeds so as not to reduce your supply.

This is good on cluster feeding

Also this on pumping - in fact I should have looked this up first, because in fact it explains exactly what's happening to your expressing output ATM and it sounds as though it's normal. (The article is aiming at expressing so you can work but it should be the same principle.)

If you haven't come across Kellymom before, it's a very well respected site with well researched articles. It's US-based of course but that doesn't really change much, aside from the bias towards expressing for work rather than for sleep!

Thanks bertiebotts I found both those links really useful for understanding 5wk old dd's feeding patterns

thank you very much for those interesting / helpful links bertie bots

so far today i have 5oz (not using my hospital pump) so hoping yesturday was a blip....

Glad to hear things are looking up :)

well yesturday i got 10oz and today i have got nearly 11oz.

that is hand pumping during the night and 4 pumps during the day, but at least i have the expressed milk now...

and my freestyle is so much faster than the swing... can have both boobs expressed in 7 mins!

nannyl - just a few quick qs.

Do you express when baby is getting a bottle? If you don't and then she sleeps for quite a while your breasts get the slow down on the milk production signal (the longer you leave it between feeds the less milk gets told to be made).

Also, 6oz seems like a massive amount for a 8 week old baby to take, I would have thought more like 2 or 3oz would be plenty. Does DH give her plenty of rests from the bottle and let her take her time over it (is the teat a newborn/slow flow one?)? It can be easy for a baby to suck down a lot of milk because they want to suckle rather than feed.

Glad things r looking up/ fwiw I only express anything worth using with a manual pump. My medela was useless for me!!