First timer with questions

[GingerDoodle]

Hi all

I am 20+4 with my first and am thinking about feeding.

I want to bottle feed using expressed breast milk; my reasons are various but mainly to involve my husband and to prevent issues when I return to work after 4 months.

I appriciate it might not be the most usual of feeding options!

I have read enough to know I am letting myself in for a tough time at first establishing my milk but am a bit unsure about how it will 'work' in the early days as obviously I won't be expressing in advance of baby making an entrance.

Can anyone advise?

Many thanks

GD

Ginger, people do express and feed from the beginning, usually because there is an issue with the baby being able to come to the breast direct (baby is very ill, or has some oral difficulty eg cleft palate) and they would normally hand express in the very early days, moving on to a pump (for speed and convenience) when the milk comes in (though you can hand express indefinitely). So it is possible.

You may have other reasons for choosing this but the ones you give here don't indicate that there's no option to breastfeed direct. Fathers are perfectly well involved without actually feeding their babies - there are 1000s of ways of being involved without feeding :) - and most mothers in your situation where you are returning to work at 4 mths do make a switch to bottles at that time, and continue bf direct when they are with the baby.

I think it's useful to know that expressing and bottle feeding with expressed breastmilk is hard work and loses a lot of the convenience factor. It's time consuming and fiddly. Of course mothers do it, because it is important to them that their baby has breastmilk, and they accept the hard work and inconvenience - hats off to them :) But don't minimise the sheer effort needed!

It's important to know the full story before making your decision :)

Hi tiktok. I'm not anticipating there being a reason (fingers crossed) for baby not being able to breast feed direct however i'd rather go with what I am planning on from the start - I realise I am letting myself in for extra work!!

And also books and the Internet are not always right. They don't know your baby, and your baby hasn't read the books! Also, your milk might dry out quickly if you only pump. The books don't say that, because in theory it's the same, but two of my friends who have had to express for longer periods of time their milk dried out quickly and they ended up switching to formula earlier than expected.

The hard work comes from the fact that you have tp express, even at night time, as your boobs will get very full and it will hurt. Then, you have to clean and sterilise the pump each and every time you express, so if you get up at 2 am to express you will have to clean the pump in the middle of the night and sterilize it for use first thing in the morning. You will have to wash and sterilize the bottles, obviously, and each express session will take about 20 minutes, plus the baby's actual feeding time which will be another 15 20 minutes. You will have to express every 3-4 hours to keep the milk up, any longer in between and your boobs will hurt and be very full. Also, pumping can irritate the nipple as much or more than BF so that's another issue. I am not trying to dissuade you, but books don't all state that.

I don't how it would work to establish the milk, because to start of with little babies tend to feed very very often, so would you have to pump every two hours, I'm not sure.

I'm not 100% sure on this as I never really got on with pumping, so only did it rarely if I had to go somewhere without DC, and it was after 4 months that I even entertained pumping.

FWIW, I bf till DC was 11 months, never had leaky boobs, used breastpads once and any time I did pump I could only manage to get 4oz which took about an hour to get with an electric pump. With a hand pump I could maybe get enough for a thimble-full, would have taken me days to hand-pump enough for a full feed.

I'm not saying that it isn't possible, I'm just saying that some people just don't get on with pumping.

Hopefully someone else comes on with good advice and experiences.

Congrats on the pregnancy :)

Blueberry, no need to sterilise the equipment between uses if the milk is for the mother's own baby, though....but it is correct it needs to be thoroughly washed and rinsed.

Yes, expressing has to be done at night , too.

Long term expressing is only sustainable if you do it overnight and many, many times in 24 hours - at least 8 x.

That's the main reason why it does not persist, because it's such hard work, and few women can actually maintain the intensity day and night long term :(

Ginger. I am going to be really blunt with you. If you set out planning to express simply because you prefer not to feed direct and don't want to have to change when you return to work, the odds are extremely high that you will move onto fully formula feeding within the first few weeks. That may not matter to you, but I think you deserve to have it said to you that bluntly so you can make up your mind.

Bear in mind how much babies change in the first weeks and months. Weaning a four month old onto a bottle is a process many many women have done, and it is massively outweighed in inconvenience by the time you will spend in the first four months if you exclusively express. Exclusively expressing will give you very little time to actually enjoy your baby in those precious months - it has all the disadvantages of breastfeeding and all those of bottle feeding. Effectively you are doing both feeding methods, so think about how much time that take up. Also, once you go back to work you will likely still be pumping in the night, which is much harder to cope with than giving a straight breast or bottle feed (again because you are doing two jobs instead of one - feed and pump).

Exclusive expressing is a marathon feat of endurance which I massively admire, but personally I wouldn't choose it simply as an 'option'.

If you really don't want to feed direct for whatever reason, then absolutely, expressing is a great thing to do. You can give your baby a great initial boost, but unless you are 100% committed to expressing, I think you need to think of it in those terms rather than as a long term arrangement.

I would really consider if it is the best plan. I just posted a message on the fact that breastpumps just dont seem to work for me (despite this being my 5th baby and having a chubby 3 month old ebf baby!).Also you will spend most of your time, pumping or feeding. If you cannot breastfeed direct then of course giving some breastfeeds is better than none, but I wouldnt bank on it as a long term plan simply because it will make life complicated.
My dh has no problem with not feeding the children for the first few months - he does though tend to be in charge of baths when hes around so thats sort of his thing perhaps your dh would be happy with this?.
I would think your would still be able to establish milk supply as long as you pump very often from the start though if this is the concern you have?

Pumps are expensive and don't necessarely work. I remember buying the Mothercare one, which has a hard cup that you put on the breast, and it said in the instruction 'make sure the cup covers the nipple fully' but the cup was too big for my breast, and had no suction at all as I couldn't get my boob to fill the cup! I ended up with the tommee tippee one which worked Ok for me.

I thought you'd have to serilize after each use, that's what I did, doh.... We did for both babies BF and express for the last feed of the evening which my husband did. I mean I expressed and he gave the bottle... I know lots of books say that giving the breast and the bottle might confuse the baby and he.she will not latch on properly, but it worked fine for us.

Blueberry, it's good practice to store ebm in a sterilised container but guidance for expressing at home is that hot soapy water washing and thorough rinsing is enough for the collection container. If you are in hospital, prob good idea to sterilise collection container, though.

That's great that you are thinking in advance about feeding your baby.

However...can I add to the chorus of voices saying that choosing to express all feeds when you have a genuine choice just to put the baby to your breast is setting yourself up for a huge amount of hard work. When you have had a baby, you want to minimise the work, not create more work.

You are basically doubling the time taken for each feed (firstly, to express, then to feed the expressed milk). And newborns feed a lot, even directly from the breast / from a bottle with formula. Many women say that they feed that their newborn "feeds all the time". Yours will be feeding all the time, plus you will be trying to fit in the expressing / cleaning all the bottles / teats / pump etc.

You will have to do this in the night. Perhaps every 2 hours. There is no way that I would have chosen to be awake rather than asleep with a newborn.

Your DH can do soooo much. In fact everything, apart from breastfeed. For example: soothe the baby (do not underestimate how much a newborn needs soothing), wind the baby, change the baby, entertain the baby, take the baby out so you can get sleep. make all meals, do all housework.

You could perhaps express one feed a day, so that your DH can feed the baby his / her last feed of the evening. This would involve your DH, give you a rest, and still do a bit of feeding.

Pumps are far less efficient at getting the milk out than a baby is. You might find it pretty difficult to express (some women find they can only express very small amounts, whereas they are able to feed the baby direct from the breast no problem).

Many many women have gone back to work at 4 months, and moved the baby onto a bottle (with expressed milk or formula). But give yourself a break for the first 4 months, and breastfeed!

Thank you all for your messages.

I appriciate your views and may well end up doing somthing different or indeed end up with forumla (I have no real hang-ups about whatever works) but for now my plan is to express and I am just trying to figure out the logistics.

All that expressing with a newborn is too time consuming. It takes me long enough to get one bottle a day, I can't imagine being able to take care of the baby whilst also expressing enough for ten feeds a day. Unless I had to do it for a sick baby.

If you introduce one or two expressed bottles a day from the start, giving up breastfeeding when you go back to work ought to be fine. But if you don't want to breastfeed, then you'd be better off using formula from the start than spending all day attached to a pump rather than enjoying your baby.

Just been thinking of more reasons to breastfeed from the breast: you never run out. At 12 midnight, when your new baby wants yet another feed, you haven't run out. When your baby is having a growth spurt (several times over the first 4 months), your breasts automatically adjust, you don't have to worry about how much you might need to express. It's always at exactly the right temperature. If you go out, you don't have to take anything with you, and you never worry about running out when you are away from your home.

I agree with another poster who says that you might well end up formula feeding because you have underestimated how tough it is to exclusively express for a newborn. Women who do this, for medical reasons such as tiktok describes, are heroines. But I'm absolutely sure that none of them would have chosen to exclusively express, if they could have breastfed from the breast.

In fact, it might be more helpful for you to start a thread with a title like "Did you exclusively express?", to get some perspectives from women who have done what you are considering.

I have read what you said about you've already made the decision etc. But the reason everyone is telling you it's maybe not a good idea is because they have experience of this, rather than looking at it in advance like you are.

I had to express for the first week because my daughter was 3 weeks early and tongue-tied. Fortunately, she learned to latch with the help of nipple shields, and then fed directly after that. The tie was not cut for another 9 weeks, so it was very painful for me to feed her and she was very inefficient so took even longer than newborns usually do to feed.

But I far preferred to feed her directly for that time. Breastfeeding isn't just about nutrition, there is a big psychological effect on both of you too. And the inconvenience/time/practicalities/risk of not being able to pump enough/loss of closeness etc were in no way worth saving the pain I experienced.

Assuming your child will be able to feed effectively, I can't see it being worth it to you either, unless there's something else going on here. Is your husband putting pressure on you to bottlefeed so he can feed the baby? As said by previous posters, there are multiple other ways for him to bond, men just aren't supposed to be able to feed babies, it's a fact of nature.

And many other women have gone back to work at 4 months and still breastfed directly before then. After 6 months your baby might be OK with you not pumping while you're at work anyway, and just feed more when you're back at home, so it would be easier if you could delay your return till then. But I echo the above advice to ask people who've done it, and really reconsider pumping if you don't have to.