Exclusive expressing, anyone else?

[squashimodo]

Ok, I am now having to excusively express. I have found out my dd (6 weeks) has both a tongue tie and an upper lip tie.
I am trying to persuade gp to refer for the snip, but arrgh he is not very understanding.
My dd even has problems with a bottle, although she has put on weight now, and weighs 8lb and 5oz.
I keep trying to latch her on, but this means I have to virtually express into her mouth, and with 3 ds with autism to look after aswell, well quite frankly, I am exhausted. So I just give her lots of cuddles and put her near the breast, even lick the nipple but do not force her to latch on, I just let her do her little sucks. I feed her by bottle, since we will be stuck with that for a while.
Sometimes though I have to give her formula because I do not have enough expressed. I need to build up a stash, but I do not know how to manage that at the moment, I think she must be going through a growth spurt, she woke up every two hours last night.
If there is anyone else out there, how is it going for you?
Have you got a supply? How did you manage to do it?
Any tips from experienced expressers will be much appreciated.

Hi, squashimodo,
I exclusively expressed for DS2 who was premature for about 4 months. It can be done and in some ways makes life more predictable than a hungry baby.
If tongue tie is the primary problem then surely it make sense to have that addressed, non? Can your HV speak up on your behalf or can you see another Gp? BFing support person? Anybody to get your DD seen by paeds?

Anyway, exclusively expressing:

Most people have most supply in the morning.
Double pumping helps
Express the same kind of times of day every day.
Get good electric pump, hospital grade ideally, although Almeda Lactaline worked fine for me.
Cont lots of skin to skin contact.

There is a good book on this, I will dig it out.

Good luck to you.

Website. The book is also available from Amazon.
HTH .

Oh, you poor thing. you must be absolutely exhausted. As a mum of a demanding toddler and a new baby with feeding issues this time last year, I really do feel for you. I went from pillar to post trying to get help for my feeding issues but as my DS was gaining weight it was seen as not an issue, even though I was in pain. Turns out DS2 has a lip tie which was afffecting the way he latched on.

I would echo that getting the tongue tie addressed is a priority; especially if it is impacting on breastfeeding and am at your GP not referring to get these issues addressed. If you look on the baby friendly initiative site there is more information, including the NICE guidelines on tongue tie. There also there are links to various hospitals that carry out tongue tie separation (lip tie is less commonly performed as I found out when I discovered my DS had one). some require a GP referral, but most will take a referral from a lactation consultant or breastfeeding counsellor.

Re the expressing, I have no personal experience, but a friend of mine exclusively hand expressed for six months and is still expressing to give her DS a couple of BM feeds a day at 10 months.

the worst times, she said, were the growth spurts as she was either expressing or feeding and not doing a lot else, including looking after her older toddler. I know you are finding things tough with your autistic son as well, but I'm not sure that the time required to exclusively express and then all the feeding of the expressed milk will make that any easier, although someone else can do the feeds to give you a break so you can spend time with your son.

Have you seen a BFing counsellor? And also looked at different ways of latching? I think there is advice on kellymom regarding latching a tongue-tied baby.

Hi Squashimodo
You're doing a great thing in expressing for your dd. This weekend I will have been exclusively expressing for one year. As PacificDogwood said, double pumping with an electric pump is the best way to keep up supply. That said I still managed to keep up a decent supply with a Medela single electric pump for 4.5 months before I switched to a double. I have always found this page to have answers to most of my questions.

The best advice I could give you is called 'the fridge trick'. When you have finished an expressing session, just pop the pump parts that you usually wash and steralise in a plastic box and put them in the fridge until you next need them. You then only need to wash and steralise once a day. I wish that I had known that BEFORE I had been doing this for 5 months!