My question is, do you think I should carry on expressing, or shall I stop? I promise to go with the majority verdict in an hour so. I will try and give all details in one post so apologies if this gets a bit long winded.
My youngest daughter is 2.5 years old. 15 months ago I had surrogate twins, born at 28 weeks, who I expressed milk for, for six weeks, and 3 weeks ago exactly, I had a surrogate baby boy, born at 27 weeks. That's 4 babies in 2.5 years in case you weren't counting. This is relevant further on.
I didn't enjoy expressing at all for the twins. It was a hassle, I hated the washing, the sterilising, the time it took, the pain, the broken nights sleep, and jumped at the chance to stop. I swore that I would never offer to do that again for anyone.
However I agreed that in the best interests of baby, if baby was born early this time I would express to give him/her the best start in life.
The pregnancy this time was hard, probably due to having so many, so very close together. My iron levels were 82, I felt shocking and it really took it's toll on me. Then baby arrived at 27 weeks after a partial placental abrubtion. I lost a lot of blood, general anasthetic, 4 units of blood etc etc.
So anyway I expressed. I started 2 days after my section and it took a good 10 days to get a good supply going. There was never any morning when I woke up and just knew my milk was in, but my pumping every 3-4 hours I got up to around 600ml of milk per day. I actually didn't hate it as much this this as it's not so unpleasantly cold to be getting up at night.
Then, on Saturday, when baby was 15 days, I was admitted to hospital with excuciating kidney pain. The pain was worse than labour but luckily I passed the stone within a few hours, and was only left with a very bruised and stingy, twingy kidney for a few days. I was admitted to hospital so they could check things out on Monday.
By Monday I was spiking a temperature often. The long and the short it is that went on until Wednesday with the drs not sure what was causing it. I am now on two anti-biotics, which are breastfeeding friendly, and home, but feeling like I have been run over by a truck.
While I was in hospital, for the first two days I managed to express fairly often, but by Monday I just felt too poorly and hardly had the energy. By today I was only doing it twice a day and getting a pathetic 20ml from one breast and 80ml from the other. It was so nice last nght though not to wake up in the night with hard, painful boobs needing to express.
NICU have said when they run out of my milk in the freezer they can always use donor milk. I am so, so tempted to just stop. I have only done it twice today, first time getting 100ml, the second time a pathetic 30ml. So, should I work hard to re-establish my supply and then go through the whole drying up thing again in a few weeks, or just stop now, when I am almost there anyway, but baby won't be ready for a few more weeks?
I know it sounds easy, but I really feel knackered, and shit and beaten.