Pumping away - but worried about messing up supply

[Essie3]

I have rather too much milk - baby is 2 weeks old and I'm still getting rock hard breasts between feeds. I leak a lot too.
So, I've been expressing when the breast is painful (helps baby too - otherwise he slurps and gets windy/sick), but I'm really worried about messing up the supply - that my breasts won't settle down, or that I'll stop producing or something. Can anyone help?

What I do is I pump for about 1 minute, just to take the pressure off. I manage 40-60mls though!

I'm no expert but I would say don't worry. I did the same when DS was first born as I ended up with huge bowling ball boobs that DS couldn't latch on to. I'm not sure I pumped for that long, I just sort of did it until they had a bit of give in them, if you know what I mean. Your boobs will settle down but take a while, and eventually they'll just produce what your baby is needing. If you are anything like me you'll then worry that theres no milk because you don't get big hard boobs!!! I was worried it would mess up my supply but I fed DS exclusively til 6 months and still feed him now at 2 years with no probs. Just make sure you keep an eye out for lumps or red areas if he doesn't drain them all as I did end up with mastitus which was pretty horrid. A good tip someone told me was that if you have any painful lumps that aren't cleared by feeding, to stroke them out in the shower with soapy hands to prevent the milk ducts getting infected-just stroke from outside of breast towards nipple while waters running over them and they should clear!

I'm not an expert either, but afaik, pumping that much will not help your supply settle down. I believe the advice is that if your boobs are painful, just express off a tiny bit to stop them being rock hard. This will help baby latch too. I never had to do this but apparently hand expressing in the shower normally works well.

(i wish I could get that much in a minute. Normally takes me half an hour!)

Hm, yes, it seems I'm a bit of a cow (of the milking variety!). I'm keen to start giving him a bottle of expressed - but I'd totally overflow...