Expressing for premature baby

[Jenks17]

Hi,

My baby was born at 25+5 and is now a week old. So far I've been in the hospital and been expressing between 15-20ml milk 10 x daily with the hospital pump.

I came home yesterday and have been using the Bellababy pump and am now only getting around 10ml.

I need to play around with it yet and get used to the different settings, but just in case it doesn't improve I wondered if anybody else expressed for a premature baby and found a different model any better?

The hospital have loaned me one but it's different to the actual ones I was using in hospital and only has one setting, which is to pull your nipple off, so I had to stop within 30 seconds as it was way too wrong for me at the moment.

Thanks in advance x

I ended up hiring the same model of Medela pump when I came home. My HV loaned me a different brand but I had a similar experience to you with it. My hospital couldn’t even loan to me as I wasn’t in there postcode

Would hiring be an option? Best wishes to you and your baby

I hired the Medela as well. In terms of expressing I had a full term baby before my 26 weeker. I had kept a feeding diary for DS1 and I initially pumped to that schedule in an attempt to trick my body into believing I was breastfeeding. This meant I was basically pumping every 2-2.5 hours for not more than 15 mins at a time. Then gradually increased it to 3 hours and 20 mins. So roughly I was then pumping
6:30 am
Head to NICU
Pump at 9. Wait for ward rounds
Pump at 11:30. Have lunch.
Pump at 2.
(Leave to go get the older one from school).
Pump at 4/4:30
Do dinner/bed/bath with the older one.
Pump at 7
Back to the NICU
Pump at 9:30
Leave the NICU at 11ish
Pump at 11:30. Fall asleep.....zzzzz
2:30-3 One pump at night.

So that’s pumping 9 times in the day with the NICU visits and one overnight. I ended up breastfeeding the 26 weeker for a full year btw.

If you're not close to your baby when you express you can get less. I was told to try having a cloth with babies scent and look at photos. No idea if that helped bit worth a try. Express in hospital as much as you can when baby is near. And hire a gentle pump if that helps. I also go a pump bra top that holds bottles in place, it looks ridiculous but you have your hands free for other things at least. Good luck x

Expressing is hard. I’ve breastfeed three and never really managed to make it work. Try photos etc as advised above.

I also had to massage and reposition a lot.

Also, it’s really hard. I honestly couldn’t and not everyone can. If it gets too much it’s ok to stop. I say this as someone who’s breastfed 3 and enjoyed it. I had a 4th I couldn’t and nearly drove myself mad over it, once we were on bottles it was easier. Not saying you have to- just putting the idea out

Thank you so much for your replies ladies. Think I'm definitely going to rent the same one I was using at the hospital. It's expensive but worth it to stop me going insane! Managed to get the same amount of milk in my last express that I was getting at hospital with my new machine but I had to put it on a really high setting and an hour later my boobs are sore which is no good!

Thanks again! It's good to know I'm not the only one that's found it so difficult!

Make sure you get the right size of flange (plastic cone bit), they usually have different sizes depending on your size/shape. The one you’ve been using might be ok with a different flange.

Also agree about expressing next to your baby if you can, it does help.

Really helpful thank you ladies! I had an express whilst visiting baby at the hospital before using the machine I'm used to and it was heaven so I rented it straight away! The neo natal nurses gave me a 20% off code to use on the medela website to get it as well so anyone reading this in future it's worth asking!

Thanks again for your replies, it's been really helpful.

Glad you’ve got a good solution! Wishing you and your baby all the best in NICU and beyond.