night out - how do i stop my boobs feeling sore and rockhard?

[mmmmchocolate]

My DS2 is 5 weeks and i have been given tickets to an audience with take that and i can't turn it down!!

He is totally breast fed so i will be expressing milk to leave him. but how do you manage with the sore boobs. i think i will be away fro about 7 hours for start to finish.

I left him for 2 hours on saturday for first time to go horse riding and was sore when i got back and rock hard. how will i cope all that time??

Can you take a discreet small hand pump, and use it in the toilets. Not very nice but this is what I had to do on my hen night when ds1 was 8 weeks old.

is there such a thing? i have a noisy medela pump electric...

yeah, but a bit expensive just to get for a night out. You can hand express, you would have to look up how to do that, its a technique involving holding the breast in two hands and massaging. Would relieve your discomfort and keep your supply up though

would my supply be affected? now im thinking of not going!!!!!!

only fed dd1 for 1 wk so by my own standards am doing really well.

I'm sure that you can get around your supply being affected, but it is early days to not feed for 7 hours, and may require a bit of work to get back to normal. Then again you may have a really good supply and it won't matter at all.
If you can't express when you are out (do take some breast pads as you might experience let downs anyway) make sure you do it when you get home if dc is asleep.

i get let down all the time now, forever changing pads...

worried now about supply gonna have to look in to it more now and work out if worth it.

if you have let down and changing pads all the time, while you need to be saving milk (for when you go you lucky girl!!) how about trying the breast shells/cups. while feeding form one boob use one on the other, i was amazed at how much i would collect from the leaking boob just while sitting there and feeding. i used to save enough for an extra bottle feed a day at least. now at nearly 5 months my boobs have adjusted and hardly leak while feeding so i cant catch any more, but while its pouring out freely make the most of it!!

worleywinterwonderland I used to do that as well, really effective as long as you position the shells properly

thats true, and i had to keep an eye on how full they are getting as i would over fill them sometimes and spill a little as i poured it in to the bottle.

am sorry to hijack but WWW where can I get breast shells from? Any recommendations?

I had mine from Mothercare, they seemed fine, not sure where else you can get them

hi, i got mine from boots, i think they were around £5-6. they can go in a microwave sterilser too which was good.

cheers orb and www - they are on the list now