Depressing expressing

[GetDownYouWillFall]

I seem to have got into a rather annoying cycle of having to get up in the night or very early morning to express, even when my baby is asleep.

I am not sure how to break out of it. He is 8 weeks old.

He is very sleepy in the mornings and very hungry / screamy / needy in the evenings which has led to me feeing constantly pretty much all evening until he finally gives in a goes to sleep about 11pm. This then seems to boost my supply so much that I am then waking in agony about 3 or 4am, and have no choice but to get up and express.

I'm often then having to express again at about 8am. Sometimes I get 5 oz, just to feel comfortable again.

I've been saving it, and DH has been giving it to him in the evenings as a bottle, and I think this has helped him go longer at night, but it seems to have set up this rather irritating cycle of night time expressing.

Any ideas?

As you are waking and expressing the excess milk your body still thinks it needs to produce this milk.

The best thing to do is if you find it to painfull just to miss the expressing, is reduce the amount you are expressing over a few days your body shoud then ajust and produce less milk.

By the way the feeding all evening is totaly normal and if your baby is sleeping well then this cluster feeding in the evenings is helping him sleep longer at night

thanks MigGril

Do you know whether the body learns to make less milk at night? e.g. if I feed every 3 hrs during the day, but none at night, do I produce milk continuously or does it adjust so that less is produced at the time of day you don't normally feed?

Not sure if that makes sense ? Tired brain!

From what I know I'd say yes. Your body produces milk after the first month on a purly supply and demanded basis, so you only produce milk when you baby demands it. Once you have a well estabished milk supply you shouldn't feel to full unless you start missing feeds.

Hope that was helpfull.

Kellymom is a really good website for lots of info on BF if you want to do some more reading.

I found it helped a lot to put frozen peas on my boobs for about 20min before I went to bed. Are you using a pump? Maybe try just hand expressing until you feel comfortable (I found hand expressing gave more relief, even though I think I get much less milk that way).

Your body should adjust to your ds sleep pattern gradually - it has always taken me 3 days to feel less engorged when dd (or I) decided to drop a feed, a week to feel no discomfort, and a couple of weeks to feel totally back to normal. If you're like me, I found 4 months brought a big change, much less engorgement and leaking after that. But there are some advantages to oversupply - at the moment I feed my 13mo dd once a day (first thing) and no signs of any shortage yet! Hth