Guilt over stopping pumping

[HEIHEI23]

I’ve been combi feeding our 1 month old - 2 bottles of breast milk and the rest formula. I have 3 weeks worth of milk in the freezer. I really wanted to get to two months to reduce the risk of SIDS. However, I’m spending SO much time pumping I’m missing out on spending time with the baby. It’s about 3 hours a day spent attached to the pump! My husband goes back to work soon and I think I’ll struggle to do it all as he’s been a huge help.
I felt so much guilt not fully breastfeeding but we had to stop as baby was losing weight and was dehydrated when admitted to hospital. I feel even more guilt now that I feel I’m dropping for convenience 😫 has anyone been in this situation and has advice?

A fed baby is a happy baby, and you are doing just fine :-)

Don’t feel guilty, convenience will mean you can spend more time with baby and you’ll be more content in yourself too.

Nailed it.

Echoing what @AnotherDelphinium says. I struggled as DS had a tongue tie and I tried SO hard to pump at all hours of the day and night. DH jokes that he has ptsd from the noise of the machine 😂 in the end DH could see how stressed I was getting about it and helped me stop. It's honestly not worth it, DS is 3 and has happy and healthy as can be!

My husband says the same - that he can hear it in his sleep when it’s not even on 😂thank you for that! I just want to spend time with my baby instead of a pump 🙈

OP feeling guilty doesn't make you a better mum. Making the right decision for you and your baby does. You are making the right decision for you both.

Could you go back to breastfeeding a couple of times a day and then offer formula top-ups after?

i really struggled with breast feeding my first and it was so difficult - I spent months feeling stressed about pumping, washing bottles, trying to
io my supply…and oh the noise of the pump still haunts me! My little boy is now 2.5 and very healthy and happy - I wish I’d enjoyed the early days with him more. One thing that helped me was reading Emily Oster’s research on the benefits of breastfeeding - it gave me some perspective that I’d lost with the stress, worry and guilt. You sound like an amazing mum - hope you find a way forward that works for you and your child ❤️

I’ve tried and baby won’t latch at all now! I’ve finally made my peace with not breastfeeding (I think!) but now into the next guilty feeling 🙈

Pumping is horrible. You are not unreasonable to want to stop.

Are you feeling able to share a little bit more about how things have gone with feeding since birth? It's really hard to get good advice about combifeeding, but there are lots of mums here that have significant experience of it, and also some posters who are very competent breastfeeding counsellors. Is there a particular outcome you are aiming for? Would you prefer to keep breastfeeding but stop pumping?

As an example, my baby dropped so much birthweight she ended up in intensive care so dehydrated she nearly died. I just never made enough milk - some of us really can't! However she is still breastfeeding at nearly 2, because I really wanted to breastfeed, and it still suits us. Never thought I'd stick my boob near a toddler with teeth, but... that's how things are!

I triple fed (breast-bottle-pump) for weeks and never made enough milk to not use formula for the bottles. Once my husband went back to work I largely had to stop pumping every time because there just aren't enough hours in the day, and ut was uncomfortable, draining, frustrating and taking all my new mum joy away. After that it was breast and bottle-of-formula, and after nearly a week of pumping maybe 2 or 3 times a day, getting 10-40ml a time, I might have enough for a expressed milk bottle. After 3months or so I only pumped for comfort.

Just seen your extra post - would you want to find ways to encourage your baby to latch and pick up breastfeeding again (i also had to work at this!), or are you hoping to make your peace with switching to solely bottles of formula?

This makes me so angry. Women have done this to each other. The guilt, the pressure, it's utterly ridiculous. Even here there are people suggesting you work on your latch and start breastfeeding. Just give it all up and enjoy your baby. Your baby will be perfectly happy and healthy, and you won't even think about what milk they had before long. I pumped with all 3 of my children as couldn't get the latch, the guilt I felt ruined so much of the early months. It's great that you've done it for as long as you have. Don't give yourself monthly goals that aren't based on anything. Just give up now and spend that extra 3 hours a day cuddling and playing with your baby. That will have a much greater benefit for all x

When we brought him home, he was a few weeks early, he was jaundiced and incredibly sleepy. He found it really difficult to do feeds, especially night feeds, as he would latch on then fall asleep after 5 minutes. This would repeat every hour or so. On day 5, he was readmitted back to hospital as he’d lost too much weight, was jaundiced and dehydrated. It absolutely terrified us as we had no idea. The hospital gave us a plan where he was breastfed for a set time then given a top up. He still continued to fall asleep during this so I was told to strip him down every time to his nappy and use a cold wipe to make him cry to wake him up to feed. I absolutely hated this, especially at night! It felt so cruel on him. We tried to wean him off the top ups and he quickly became dehydrated again. Then I decided it was enough to stop breast feeding as he wasn’t thriving! I think I would have loved to breast feed but it just wasn’t what our baby needed!

First line had it

I pumped for 6 months with first born, but basically cos we spent most of it in hospital! I managed a month with the twins. You can't tell any difference.

I tried to breastfeed my second baby and she had a poor latch in hospital. It was very painful despite midwives saying this was to be expected. Ditto from visiting midwives at home.

I had to stop breastfeeding after 5 weeks as I was crying in pain every time my baby fed from one side, as it got infected and my nipple actually cracked. The pain was awful... I wish I had stopped earlier for my mental health. It doesn't work for everyone and a healthy baby is a happy baby. She's 6 now and has had speech delays which makes me think she might have had latching problems (even though this was checked as well).

It still brings back difficult memories as the other six members of my NCT group had babies who all breastfed for ages %with no issues whatsoever. Your mental health is so important x

This all sounds very familiar to me. We're you able to get any counselling in hospital?

(We were very fortunate that the NICU my daughter ended up in arranged for us to see one of their psychologists before they agreed to discharge my daughter. This was helpful to give us some tips for helping manage the guilt we felt about her getting so ill from lack of milk. Down the line, I actually feel slightly more angry that the issues were overlooked, given we saw midwives every day from birth until she was admitted to NICU. It's past now, though, and I can't change any of it, and she's perfectly healthy.)

It sounds like you are done with breastfeeding, but it isn't too late to work on encouraging your baby to latch. This can be nice for comfort, for you to feel like they are getting some breastmilk benefits, and so on, even if you it isn't working out for food. However, if you want to, I would try to see a feeding counsellor for good, in person advice. The gist of it will be lots of skin to skin time, but also, switch your bottle teats to ultra slow flow premmie baby ones, and tilt the bottle away so they dont get milk immediately it goes in the mouth - let it out once they've started sucking (as it would be during let down for breasrfeeding). The little blighters are quite lazy, and getting milk from a bottle with a faster flowing teat is less work than boob.

It's fine to be done with breastfeeding too, though. On the plus side, at least you won't turn into me, stuck with a toddler who can now call "Boo-bie! Boo-bie!" in public. You'll also likely find your formula fed baby sleeps through the night sooner (there's no evidence for this, but anecdotally, that's what I've observed: I think it's that it's easier to pack enough milk into them in the day with bottle feeding, for them to need less, and wake less, at night). If you ditch the pumping you'll have more time and energy and enthusiasm for your baby!

If you choose to let your milk supply dry up, watch out that this can cause more baby blues / a mood dip, because of the hormone changes.

There will be many choices in how you do parenting. How your baby us fed is only the first, so try to keep it in perspective. It has been a life and death choice that was forced on you - formula feeding was needed, which makes it feel very intense . Once you start weaning, though, your baby will be eating all sorts - and many of them will actually be bad, unlike formula! (Cake. Biscuits. Dirt...)

You've done an amazing job! I triple fed DD1 for about 16weeks. She was a NICU baby, i was traumatised, it definitely mentally broke me, horrid pnd and I hated that bloody pump by the end of it. DD2 had a really severe tongue tie and I was really pushed to pump again, but I flatly refused. I did one pump before going to bed for a few weeks and that was it. I was able to keep bf going plus formula top ups until around 6months, but it felt so liberating to stop pumping and we just used formula instead. Free yourself from the pump!

I could have written this myself. I initially wanted to breastfeeding but ended up expressing and topping up with formula. Baby was a contact napper so I normally ended up expressing when she was awake, as well as having to be awake expressing while she was asleep at night. I hated how it was stopping me from just enjoying spending time with her. I gradually reduced how often I expressed and stopped altogether after about 3.5 months. At the time I felt the same guilt as when I didn’t manage to breastfeed but now I feel like it was the best decision I could have made for my baby and me.

Do what you feel is right for you. Whatever that is, you and your baby will be happier for it.