Dealing with baby sleeping longer at night.

[Writerwannabe83]

DS is 6 weeks old and has started to sleep for longer periods at night in between his feeds. He used to wake ill every 2.5 hours for a feed but now he typically goes 4 hours and on two occasions he has gone 5 hours.

The problem is that my milk supply hasn't adapted to this change and I'm waking up most nights with either painful, engorged breasts, or waking up due to my nursing bra and pyjama top being saturated with breast milk.

On a few occasions I have woke my DS for a feed just to relieve my breasts and at other times I run to bathroom and hand express into the sink. About 2or 3 times I've had to express purely because my breast is too hard/full for DS to latch on to. Last night I was sitting in bed with my breast pump and drained 4oz in about ten minutes.

I just don't know how to address this problem as I don't want to wake DS for feeding but at the same time I can't cope with the painful, solid breasts. I also know that I'm being my own worst enemy by expressing because all that does is encourage my breasts to produce more milk, but I don't know how else to deal with it.

How do other people cope with this?

Your supply will settle down, which doesn't give you much comfort now, I know! Have you tried just expressing off the tiniest possible amount so you're not uncomfortable? Bm keeps for months in the freezer so you could build up a supply either for an emergency bottle should you be ill or for mixing in to baby porridge when you start to wean.

I express the minimum amount to keep me comfortable until next feed, and freeze it.

Which breast pads are you using? Lansinoh are the best I think, they hold a lot of milk.

I wouldn't pump off a lot if I were you, your supply needs to regulate and pumping if you don't need to will encourage more milk production

It will calm down. I had so much milk at around 6-8 weeks but now at 10 weeks my ds has upped the amount he's drinking so it doesn't seem like I have too much.

It does get better, o had similar issues. I'd stop expressing tho otherwise you're body won't adapt and will keep on producing the same amount.

Oooh, don't pump off 4oz. You are just telling your boobs that you're doing a full feed. Try and ride it out and just express enough off to ease the pressure if you really need to. It will regulate soon, I promise.

Second the lansinoh recommendation. None of the other brands come close imo. That will at least address the sopping clothes part of things! As for the rest, you have my sympathy, I'm in the same position!

Thanks everyone, I will look at getting some better breast pads. The ones I use are just a store's own brand and aren't particularly good. I managed to refrain from expressing last night