Pumping SOS

[Springwalksandsunshine]

Hi everyone, I’m looking for some advice - baby is 14 weeks and her current (rough) feeding schedule is as follows:

4oz bottles of expressed milk at 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, 11.15pm and 4am.

Baby breastfeeds to top up in between daytime feeds but not through the night.

She goes to sleep around 9pm and wakes around 7.30am, and I feel she would easily drop the 4am feed, especially if I increased the volume of her last evening and first morning feed.

My main concern is with expressing - I yield more milk when I express at 4am than any other session (I express 6 times per day) has anybody successfully stopped night time pumping and maintained a sufficient supply?

I am usually able to express only an extra ounce or two in a 24hour period.

Google has my head in a spin!

Any advice on stopping the overnight feeding and expressing would be very welcome - especially where you have personal experience.

Thanks so much. Xx

I've not pumped or even managed to stop night feeds at that age so can't help.

Hopefully this will bump for you

That seems like a lot of expressing and a lot of expressed bottles.
I don't want to be nosy, but is there a reason that you don't just breastfeed?

Expressing is such hard work!

For what it is worth, dc1 slept through from 10pm to 7am at 8 weeks, and I used to express while giving him his 7 am feed (feed on one side and express on the other) I used to get a whole bottle at 7am, a sort of build up of the night!

Thank you for your reply, that’s really useful to know and quite reassuring that for some it can work out.

It was started during a re-admission to hospital and didn’t feel I could then rock the boat by reverting back to breastfeeding alone when she was doing so well after previously struggling.

At the time I was under a lot of pressure from the health visitor, and getting conflicting advice from her, along with the infant feeding team and the midwife. My head was all over.

It’s great in some respects and works well - I get the best of both worlds, but also the worst!

Like everything, I’m expecting it to be trial and error, I’m just nervous about damaging the supply and not being able to get it back.