could anyone shed some light on some bf info a friend shared with me?

[notsoslimnow]

hello, im asking this out of pure curiosity and wondered if anyone out there had heard of/experienced what i am about to describe....... an aquaintance who is expecting her 2nd child was telling me this morning about how she intends to breastfeed using only bottles and pump, ie no baby to breast whatsoever.she said there was a reason she didnt want to allow baby to breastfeed from ''the breast'' but refused to go into it with me ??? anyhow,that wasnt what puzzled me,it was really the thought of is it possible to bf using only bottles and expressing all the time? to me this seems most perculiar

Well if you're good at expressing I'd imagine you could but imo you're getting the worst of both worlds.
I couldn't think of anything worse than expressing all day and then having to sterlise bottles and all that malarchy.

sounds like a lot of hard work....
but I suppose if using a good electric pump it would be possible to establish the milksupply!

for some reason a friend of mine couldn't breastfeed, but expressed for ages so her baby could have breast milk

Yes it can be done. I fed DS this way for 18 months, not through choice but because he would not latch on. It was an absolute nightmare of hard work and very isolating as you are tied to the pump/the house for literally hours every day.

Bizarrely though, friends who saw me go through it say they would consider doing the same thing I would have killed to have just BF direct. You have to get up in the middle of the night to express even when your baby is asleep FFS is that not reason enough?!

I've known a woman to solely feed her baby expressed breastmilk for six months. It is a lot of hard work.

I know a friend that did this too.
She had a massive hospital pump so that made it easier.
Her baby didnt latch properly and I think she was not keen on the idea of actually breastfeeding anyway, so it worked out fine for her.

My friend's baby couldn't latch on so she feed him expressed milk for 9 weeks. She said it added almost an hour to each feed; warming milk, bottle feeding, cleaning and sterilising bottles and pump, expressing. So yes it can be done, but bloddy difficult.

bloody bloddy

From reading above posts it obviously can be done, but my friend tried and her milk dried up after 2 months, she spoke to someone at LaLeche who said this can happen, apparently a pump doesn't provoke the same hormonal response as a baby.

Sounds like a lot of extra work and would only be successful for a mum who is good at expressing. Personally, I have no trouble feeding my babies but can't express more than an ounce.

I've been doing this for my DS as he had a huge weight drop just after birth and was not putting on weight quickly enough and his feeding from the breast was so poor even though I was told he was latched on properly etc...he then fed better from a bottle so we've carried this on except for the odd breast feed. I probably wouldn't have done this if the midwives hadn't scared me going on about his weigh loss all the time - well for them to then disapprove of me expressing and using bottles! Ugh!

I must say it's much harder work now my DP has gone back to work and i've had to do some feeds with formula. I've just invested in an electric pump so I can sit and hold DS whilst it does it's thing which is helpful, except it's so noisy i'm back to the hand held one at night!

Funnily enough as TPL says, i've had friends saying they'd do the same thing when they have their next babies - I know i'd much rather have been solely breast feeding but for me i'm just happy he's pretty much just fed on my milk regardless of how he's getting it - plus it's working as he's piling on the weight now, they'll be telling me it's too much weight soon knowing our luck!

It can be done, for some people. I have one friend whose DS never got the hang of latching on and who then pumped for him for a year. It's a huge undertaking though. It's more difficult to keep a good supply going that way, too, but if you have a good supply in the first place it can work.