Power Pumping. Or 'How I Lost My Sanity in 48 Hours'.

[TheDuchessOfNorksBride]

It is increasing my supply.

Though I may be hallucinating.

Has anyone else done this and did you go mad?

Big up Duchess.

do you have Exclusively Pumping by Stephanie Casemore? Available from ExpressYOurselfMums.co.uk

Shivs1974 and I think Jabberwocky exclusively pumped. there are others who have too.

oops, I am assuming you are expressing all feeds.

You need chocolate cake .

There you go. Hope that helps at least for the next session.

Aside from that I have no useful advice whatsoever because it used to take me about 3 hours to get 4oz, and I only persevered at that so I could have wine on the oooh about 1 night out I went on.

Hope it all gets better soon

I did it!

And DH was away so dd1 and I were all on our own in a continous fog of feeding and expressing. It was a bit of a weird parallel universe feeling, definitely!

But it really worked - my supply had been very dodgy and it started to come right straight away. Definitely worth it.

And of course arfishy is right, chocolate cake is essential for milk supply...

how often are you doing it and for how long ?

You should restrict it to 20 mins stints - and do more often rather than longer sessions.

Expressing is a weird world - and it really helps to know you are not the only lunatic doing it.

I used to do it while MN

I exclusively expressed for 18m. It is crap but worth it if you can't/don't want to BF direct. What are your reasons, if you don't mind my asking?

PL - wow - 18 months ! I lost the will to live somewhere around 9 months - but I was expressing for twins. I never did quite manage to get enough without topping up with formula maybe one bottle per day.

Well I'm not surprised if you were doing it for twins We probably expressed exactly the same amount of milk!

luckily mine were never 9oz per feed kids - they usually were happy with 5-6oz.

It all seems so long ago now - they are 5.5 now . But the memory is still ingrained.

No, but will throw in some sympathy. I expressed all daytime feeds from when i went backto work (ds was 6.5 months) until I couldn't bear it anymore (11.5 months)

Chocolate cake is indeed essential. As are flapjacks

I am expressing for about 15-20 minutes at a time about 12 times a day, though I am having a 3 or 4 hour sleep at night.

DC4 has mouth thrush and I have nipple thrush but I didn't spot this until he was 6 weeks (neither did anyone else including a b/f counsellor). Not surprising, b/f has been difficult and now the thrush is very well developed so I may be pumping for months to come. I did 6 months with DC2 - probably the same undiagnosed problem. I am just keeping up with him at the moment but if he starts taking an extra oz at each feed I'll have to top-up with formula.

He is gaining a 1lb a week though so he's clearly not going without.

Thank you for your kind words and cake!

OOh duch didn't realise it had got this bad.
I take it you are being treated, and the archduke as well?

Have you got a machine or are you hand expressing? You can hire machines and they do supposedly make it significantly easier.

Yes isn't pumping fun. I do it 8 times a day of about 20 min stints. My counsellor wanted me to double pump as this increase supply..........but NO THANK YOU!!!!! also pumping at night increases supply as hormones at highest. I like my bed too much though and soon dropped that.

Good Luck

JustCallMeDaisy x

Ooh you poor thing. Don't give up hope of BF direct though - I had thrush really badly and it cleared up within a week of proper treatment. Maybe you will be the same. I hope so because expressing is rough on the old nips, especially doing it round the clock. Bloody good work

I'm assuming you've got a double pump?

Wow, I exclusively expressed for 3.5 months and was going slowly crazy... I wished I had known other people were doing it and it wasn't just me being mental and obsessive might have managed longer! I am amazed that people did it for 9 and 18 months .

No advice but wanted to wish you all the best with it.

i did it for 72 hours, and it did help. but i lost my mind in the process. you have my sympathy and my support, duch.

how are you feeling, duch?

Loving 'RegenerAitch'

I'm tired but less mad I think. I'll only be expressing 8 times today because I've had the pre-school end of term party (I'm the Chair and made my speech whilst feeding the baby) followed by a primary school assembly this afternoon. Bloody hectic time all round. Roll on the holidays.

And my tits still hurt so I don't think the thrush is clearing up. Back to GPs Monday I think and I'll try one of the suggestions over the weekend.

Just wanted to doff my cap in admiration.

only 8 times...

lord almighty, you are doing a good thing but fuck me, expressing is boring isn't it? do your best, duch, it's all you can do.

How can anything that allows you to sit and MN with your norks out be boring?

Its not that its boring its that e - e- e- e squeaking noise that you begin to even hear in your sleep!