Stopping breastfeeding

[pipnchops]

DD is just over a year old and exactly a week ago I stopped breastfeeding and today I woke up feeling really engorged. It's not really painful, just a bit tender. Should I try and express a bit to ease the pressure or should I just leave it and it'll go away? I stopped gradually and didn't have any problem until today.

You could express a little, just enough to feel comfortable. Too much and you are encouraging breasts to make more milk. Hand expression may be the most gentle method and less faff. Look out for signs of mastitis such as red patches, hot to the touch, pain and fever. It may take a while to stop producing milk.

Thanks, I find it impossible to hand express unfortunately so I'll try and dig out my electric pump and see if that helps. Would it be totally out of the question to see if DD would latch and relieve a bit of the pressure? It's just I really struggle to express.

I Think that would be very confusing for your baby.
Just express a tiny bit to relieve pressure but not stimulate supply

Just dusted off my electric pump and tried to express but nothing is coming out! That's pretty standard for me even when I was at the height of my milk production career! I don't know what to do really. It's not awfully painful so I just hope I'll be OK leaving it. Bless my DD she was looking at me very strangely while I was doing it!

You could take an ibuprofen, I've found at times when I feel a bit engorged/ like I might get mastitis it calms down the inflammation a bit. Also cool pads may help. As for letting baby latch on, that's up to you, are you sure your breastfeeding journey is at an end? If you are, it may make it harder to not feed again, or maybe you both want to continue a bit longer? I don't think you necessarily have to remove and milk but a warm bath or shower, leaning forward and massaging may help if you want to try hand expressing again.

Thank you for your advice, I actually ended up latching DD on for a short time on both sides as every instinct in my body was telling me to do that and it worked a treat and didn't seem to confuse her at all. It confused me a bit though as I started crying and thinking am I giving up to soon! But as soon as I stopped and thought about all the reasons I've stopped I realised it was actually the best thing for me personally to stop now.