how can i ensure good supply this time round?

[feb]

hello all
am only 19+4 but am already worrying about feeding this lo after i had such a horrible time with ds:
he was very sleepy when born (at 37 wks)and wouldn't suck, but despite expressing every 2 hrs for 5 days (exhausting) my milk never came in and i gave up. my boobs never leaked before or after the birth.
I'm wondering if there's anything i can do before this one arrives to increase my chances of successful breastfeeding?

hi i too had v sleepy baby - born at 33 weeks - and i expressed from day 1 every 3 hours. milk came in day 4 and had excellent supply.

every 2 hours may be too much? i was recommended every 3 and followed it to the letter even setting alarm during night. did you do it at night? i was told had to make sure 1 was between 12 and 5 or something like that as you can let lactin levels drop at night. cant remeber the exact hours but know doing it every 3 meant it was covered.

my ds suck improved at 2 weeeks and from memory i stopped expressing then and as supply was well established bf took off.

also i would ask mw when still in hospital to watch you express on machine as you may not have right technique - it is an acquired skill!

yes i was expressing 24hrs a day.
he sucked from bottle fine but just fell asleep on the breast.
tried using machine to express (with mw supervision) but got 1/2mil at the most, expressing by hand was a little but not much more effective.
maybe you're right and every 2 hrs is too much.

get yourself the numbers of all the local baby cafes, all the helplines, all the peer supporters and keep them handy then if (and there's no reason for you to need them at all really) you do have problems, get in touch straight away with the experts.

I don't know too much about your situation last time but it must have been v upsetting - it sounds like you tried really hard with the expressing, and of course expressing is a much harder way of getting milk out than bf. one thing that struck me in what you were saying was that he would suck from a bottle fine but just fell asleep on the breast. hopefully if you can get advice from bf counsellors early on this time, you could avoid a situation where you are almost set up to fail as baby fills up on formula then doesn't want to feed from the breast.

ds1 was a v sleepy baby and born at 37 weeks. we struggled with bf for a long time. ds2 was born knowing what to do, had a suck on him like you wouldn't believe and I'm sure even if I'd been new to bf he would have been fine, he just knew what to do. so each baby is different.

thanks for your replies.
i'm hoping this baby will know what its doing!