breast feeding wedding dilemma? how can i express enough?

[missytequila]

I have a wedding in a couple of weeks and we cannot/ do not want to bring baby. It will last from 2.30 in the afternoon till 1am in the morning...

my baby will be 13 weeks then. she is 9 weeks now and already finishing the 5oz bottles i am able to pump and leave for hubby/sitter...

my question is how will I be able to pump more? pump enough for this long period of time??

what would you do?

DS2 is 8 weeks. I can easily pump 3oz each morning - he takes one side in the morning once he's done that I pump 3oz from the other side and then offer him the other side after the pumping.

I am therefore filling 3 x 6oz bottles each week - I am doing 2 full days at work in 3 weeks time, hence I need 6 bottles!

You just need to plan ahead with this; your baby will need 3 or 4 feeds while you are at the wedding - you have plenty of time to do what I am doing and pump 3oz each morning.

You'll need to express at least once maybe twice while you are there or you'll be uncomfortable.

You can "pump & dump" which saves the hassle of storage and sterilising but always seemed to me like a waste of breast milk. Otherwise you need to go armed with breast pump and you need access to fridge for storage.

Also if you need to pump more than once do you need to resterilise the pump? (I genuinely don't know?)

When I am at work I will go with sterile pump, and put the first lot in the fridge but if I need to pump a second time will probably just dump it.

Depending on where the wedding is and who is looking after her, can she be brought to the wedding for her bedtime feed? Or can you pop home?

MumNWLondon - You don't need to sterilise a pump at all. Just wash with hot soapy water at home and store in your fridge in between pumpings.

Missytequila - If you fed DD just before you left and as soon as you got home you could plan for feeds at

4.30ish
6.30ish
8.30ish
10.30ish

If you left 5oz bottles you'd need to have expressed 20oz which for a 13w/o for 10 hours is more than enough. If you expressed just an ounce a day from now until the wedding you would have plenty.

If you can't pump that, can someone collect the expressed milk half way through the wedding?

Once a bottle of EBM has been started by baby you've got 6 hours to finish the bottle so if DD didn't take all the milk you wouldn't waste it.

Thanks - yes I hadn't thought of that, just stick pump in fridge along with 1st batch of milk. Had visions of trying to wash it or sterilise it at work.

DS2 is fed three times in the day but hope I can get away with pumping twice, accept that will have to a lot of feeding in the couple of days afterwards to improve supply.