How often should you pump when you are away from your breastfed baby for the first time?

[Probablytired]

I will be leaving my breastfed baby for the day in a months time, she’ll be 6 months old and has been exclusively breastfed her whole life, we ONLY just got her to start taking bottles of expressed milk after 3 painstaking months of trying and failing, but that’s a whole other thing, I’m just glad she takes it now…

I’ll only be gone for the day, around 8 - 10 hours from late morning to early evening. My mum is looking after my baby and I’m going to give her 20 oz of thawed, expressed milk to work with and hope and pray that it’s enough (it’s probably way OTT right? 😂), but how often should I be pumping? I’m going to see a west end show so I’m not sure I can whip a pump out in the audience and if I did I probably wouldn’t be the most popular. Baby normally feeds every 2-3 hours in the day, does that mean I’ll need to pump every 2-3 hours too? Or is there some mileage in how long I can go before pumping?

Any advice would be really appreciated thank you! I’ve never done this before.

I went back to work when my ds was 4 months old. He was exclusively bf. I expressed 2, sometimes 3 times over the course of a 10/11 hr work day.

@imshapedlikeatoenail thank you that gives me a good idea!

You’ll be fine stretching it out a bit for a one-off occasion. You baby will easily build your supply back up over the following few days. You’ll just need to pump if you feel uncomfortable.

I would prob say every 4-5 hours would be ok for one day. More than that you will feel uncomfortable yourself.

I would leave some emergency formula cartons also as back up. At 6 months mine still refused a bottle, but a friends baby was taking 6-7oz every 2 hours daytime. So 20oz might not be enough, or accidentally gets spilt.

@SherryPalmer thank you!

@Caspianberg thats a good point thank you, I will do! She has never had formula so who knows if she’d take it but you’re right - better to have it as an option

@Probablytired - we bought some cartons as back up or emergency, Ds refused bottle so didn’t use. But then I just used any left mixed in with porridge later on so didn’t go to waste.

If it's just one day, I'd just pump or hand express for your own comfort.
It won't affect your supply.
Baby will be fine.