Oversupply: waking baby up or expressing?!

[strandedabroad]

DS is 6 weeks old and EBF.

He's starting to go 6-7 hours between feeds at night which is great. However my boobs disagree. He fed at 8pm and I woke up now (3am) with rock hard boobs. I really needed to feed so I woke him up.

Should I be doing that again? Or is expressing the answer? I've been told by a MW that expressing can mess with your supply as your body just makes more.

DS is happy and putting on weight just fine. It seems so silly to wake a sleeping baby!

Any advice?

Could you just hand express a small amount into a tissue to relieve the pain? Alternatively, I'd take painkillers and try to sleep through it. (Disclaimer I have not got a sleeping baby, but I do have oversupply of milk and expressing makes things worse for me!).

Congratulations on the sleeping baby!

I'd express to get my supply up to cope with the growth spurt and cluster feeding that is just around the corner...

The supply will increase, but in time you'll stop getting sore, hard boobs, you'll just have plenty of milk for your LO

I'd express at the moment just to keep your supply going. DS will have plenty of sleep regressions in the coming months so you don't want to start drying up (although you can increase your supply again, it just takes a couple of days). I wasn't organised enough to pump but I hand expressed into the sink/a cup etc to relieve the pressure.

I had over supply/fast let down and never expressed, partly because I was scared of making even more milk and partly because I didn't really want to buy a pump.

I found warm showers very soothing, and I also was very leaky so it always settled down before it got too bad.

I found block feeding very helpful to sort out supply.

I would also suggest to express. My DS is 7 weeks old and he started going 7 hours a night two weeks ago, so I have that same problem. He goes down at 10 and wakes at around 5 for another feed. So I tend to wake myself up around 2.30 and I pump. But I also do this because my partner gives our son one expressed bottle in the evening, so I basically wake in the middle of the night to express the bottle for the next evening.

Two choices, imo;)

One is to bear with it for a few days, maybe express to relieve the discomfort only until your body adjusts.

Or you could express before you go to bed about 10.30/11 pm, build up a nice freezer stash and still get some decent sleep.

Thanks guys and sorry for the delay. My supply seems to have adjusted to the sleeping baby. I still express occasionally and I have a nice stash in the freezer! :-)