engorged boobs when baby sleeping through the night

[LoupyLouLou]

Hello - does anyone have any advice? Same happened to them?

My baby has just started to sleep through the night, from 11 - 6.30. As he is "missing" the middle of the night feed my breasts are very engorged & painful come morning time and leaking a huge amount - through pads/bra and t-shirt onto bed between 5 and 7 am.

I am b/f during the day with one formula feed at 10.30 pm. I did express for a while before the 10.30 feed to relieve engorgement at middle of night feed but stopped as engorgement at the 3.30 to 4am feed settled down.

Is it just the case that I need to wait until they settle down and can go 12hrs without filling so much - do breasts work out when baby sleeps through the night?!? OR should I express just a little at 10.30 again? Or will that just make engorgement worse?

A couple of nights ago I just got up at 5 am and expressed a little to relieve engorgement but don't want to do that all the time as I lose the benefit of him sleeping through at last!

Any advice appreciated as this morning I lay awake for an hour just trying to decide what was best to do - get up and express or just wait till he wakes up Ahhh.

Watching with interest because dd has been sleeping from 9pm to 6am for some weeks now and I still have painful breast in the morning. Out of interest, why don't you bf him at 1030 and at least that way it won't be such a long stretch?

I you don't express and he keeps sleeping through and missing that feed your supply will adjust. I can't remember how long it took but it was just a few days I think.

If you remove the milk though, whether by expressing or feeding, that will give the signal for the milk to continue being produced and it will take longer.

Same principle as women who don't bf having their milk come in and having to wait for a few days for their body to realise the milk's not needed.

Hi there BlameItOnTheBogey - OH has fed baby at 10.30 so that I could go to bed early if I wanted to (especially good in early days when baby was waking twice in the night), do not want to change that really as baby has settled into having formula at that time since birth.

How about expressing the 1030pm feed into a bottle for DH to give?

I'm in the same boat as you at the moment. When I wake I'm usually soaked and breast are so full. I tend to expess after the 1st feed of the day, which I find handy to have a bottle if I'm popping out without DS and leaving him with DH. Or if not going out will freeze for another day.

I had this problem a while back and lay there wishing ds would wake up! I solved it by hand expressing just enough into the bathroom sink to relieve the pressure and going back to bed. Only took a few mins. Hth

Camflower - think I may try that, not tried hand expressing before but will give it a go - certainly sounds easier than getting out the electric one, going downstairs to pump etc etc. Did that help? Have they settled down?

I expressed a bit before bed gradually reducing the amount each night. Froze expressed milk then donated it to milk bank. Kept it for a bit before donating as I worried my DD sleeping through was just a phase! After a few nights of not expressing breast were fine, seemed to adjust supply after a few nights.

how old is your little one and when did you introduce the formula feed? x

IME it took a week maximum for the engorgement to stop. I just took a manual avent pump to bed with me and expressed off enough to ease the excruitiating pain level.

I wonder if you could breast feed for the dream feed instead of bottle feeding though.

I've had 3 nights of sleeping through, really hope tonight is night 4 (fingers crossed!) but am finding it horrid in the mornings still. However, this morning was less painful so i think my body is adapting already. Just worried he'll go back to waking and I'll not have enough milk...