breast feeding and returning to work

[stainesmassif]

hellooooooo

am returning to work 3 days a week in a month. how much ebm would you recommend i have stored to hand over to cm each day? ds will be 6 months and is still 98% exclusively breast feed at the mo

i hate expressing btw!

bump

Hi, I express 400 ml (approx 14 oz I think) at work each day, which keeps my DS fed the next day, between 7 AM and 5.30 PM. This was from when he was 5 months old. I haven't had to change this amount in the last 3 months as we've introduced solids to satisfy his increasing apetite.

Now I'm sure all babies are different, so you may need more or less than that.

By the way, if he's not used to taking bottles, the first few days may be difficult. Mine was on hungerstrike for 2 days, then thought better of it.

I expressed enough to keep my dd1 (who was 3 months at the time fully breast fed until she was 6 months)...

I can't remember how much I expressed but god it was a faff. I used to feed her at lunchtimes too.

I am not being much use, but what I am trying to say is you don't have to stop breast feeding when you go back to work.

about expressing, it's really worth investing in a decent pump. My Ameda Lactaline has made all the difference. I quite enjoy my 15 'staring into space' time twice a day. No faff at all really. the hand pump I had before didn't work for me and I did get stressed with it all for a while.

Good luck going back to work.

It's a good idea to try different pumps if you can as you may need to try a couple to find the right one for you. If you have a local childrens centre (formerly surestart or mystart) they usually lend out electric breast pumps. My local centre charges a one off payment of £10 which basically is just to cover a complete new sterile unit (ie, the tubes etc that come into contact with the milk) & you can have it for as long as you need it.

Also, you don't have to use a bottle to feed the expressed milk to your baby (unless you've already tried this & he's happy?) you can use a doidy (?sp) cup or other baby cup.

I had a medala electric pump which I thought was fab (used to get between 90-120ml at each session of expressing) but then I was at a daily exhibition for 3 days (home in eves) so had to buy a hand pump (which I'd always assumed wouldn't be as easy to use or as sucessful as an electric one) which turned out to be absolutely fab and quicker which I couln't believe!!

HTH

thanks everyone, i had been stressing myself out that i would need a decent store before i went back to work.

as i'm trying to introduce baby rice too, i keep using up my expressed milk on that.

i've got the avent isis, is it worth trading in for the medela? i get about 4-6 oz per session at the mo, but have been pretty lazy lately, as it just seems like more work, plus ds is always hungry!