oh well, I tried

[Lexilicious]

Have been back at work 4 weeks. DS now 6mo. Is all good. Lovely baby. In a great nursery which he loves, on site at work.

He's excl bf until the last week. We've just introduced a lot of mashed food like root veggies, porridge, fruit and he's going mental for it. Have been away from him twice - once was for 24 hrs to move house and another time was 48 hrs for an army training weekend. I had to keep slipping away to express milk. That was weird.

I express at work too. In the first couple of weeks I got loads out - 180-200ml each time, about three times a day at 3hr intervals. After the weekend though, it started dropping off. Then I've just had a three day weekend at home bf-ing like mad. Back into work yesterday and today, and expressing is still low volume. Slightly better today than yesterday, but meetings and things get in the way and I've only been able to find a room at more like 4 hr intervals. In an unpredictable job it's just not really ever going to work out, this slinking off to a room with my little cool bag and noisy electric double pump. Thin partition office walls too. What must the guys on the other side think? Ha ha, don't really care. Not been walked in on... yet.

So, I think that's pretty much the end of excl bf. Have had to provide a FF bottle on a couple of days already as there just wasn't enough EBM stock in the freezer to get ahead of the demand curve. If I do more weekends away and the 9 day (minimum) course I've got to do by the end of April that'll probably kill it off for good.

Still, 6 months was great. I just hope that I can keep enough of a trickle there to be able to do night and morning feeds.

6 months is great and excl bf is over anyway as he's eating solids!
Not sure about keeping up morning and night feed, really hope you can if you want to, hopefully someone with more experience will be along soon

I moved dd2 on to solids and kept bf every morning for weeks. Have given it up now, just felt the time was right for both of us but a month on can still squeeze some out! You might be fine, give it a go!

Hi Lexilicious, I had a very similar experience with expressing once I went back to work at 6 months. Plus DD wasn't particularly interested in drinking ebm from a bottle anyway, so the incentive to keep up the low-volume expressing wasn't great. At 9 months I just stopped expressing altogether and asked the nursery staff to give her formula during the day. (she barely drank any of that either!)

I kept bf once in the morning and once at night, and we've been doing that for nearly five months now, with no supply problems. On weekends we do an extra bf or two. I've just been away for 5 days and took the breast pump with me - I didn't manage to express loads, but enough to keep up supply for when I got back. So it can all work out. Good luck to you, I hope it does!

Agree with the others- just wondering if the nursery is on site, can you go down and feed him yourself? May not be possible of course but if you can get away to express? And I think UK employers have to allow bf breaks?

If you get stimulation to your breasts regularly (ie morning and night by your DS) then you will maintain supply for those feeds. By 6 months your milk supply/demand system is pretty robust and will adjust accordingly. And like Stealth says, excl bf is over anyway with the intro of solids. So you done good!

thanks everyone. Yes I could go and feed him at the nursery but I don't really want to go and disrupt everyone's routines. I particularly didn't want to do that when he'd just started there as he wouldn't have learned to drink from the bottle at all as he would have been holding out for when mummy comes (that had been the case with the nights out I'd had in the previous few months).

I do get bf breaks whenever I like but in reality, finding an unoccupied room at the time I choose is difficult. I don't have a precise routine so I can't book the room for precisely 10.40, 13.20 and 16.10 (for example). So the director's PA has been telling everyone who wants any sort of meeting room that there's a chance I might be in there Expressing Breast Milk For Her Child (stage whisper, cats bum mouth) which I think is funny but others might jsut not want to know..!

I really wanted to hear ideas of when it is that the boobs are established enough to cope with fluctuations. So if 6 months has probably got them running well, then I am more reassured that the odd day off won't stop the factory irrevocably.

Well done you! Its ok to feel a bit meh about not being able to continue to provide all his milk. You should still have plenty of milk for direct breastfeeding, and for the odd expressing session.
at the PA and her stage whisper with cats bum mouth!