preparing to go back to work - advice

[Helen080]

Baby is just 4 Weeks old but will be sharing maternity leave with my husband so wanted to get some practice in expressing for when I go back in a few months. At first I was planning to just give a bottle a day so would be expressing fairly infrequently then will probably have to ramp it once I go back when baby is 4 months old. Does anyone have any advice about which pump would suit best. I was also hoping that I'd be able to express on one side while baby feeds on the other and then daddy can take the night feed-am I being optimistic that I can go the night without having to feed\express??

I was in a similar position and I started building a pump into my day from about 3 weeks. This helped build up my supply and Id be able to get full feeds per pump after a short while. Breast milk can be stored for upto 6 months in a freezer so I'd initially use 2oz or so every few days to get him used to the bottle and froze the rest.

I use the Madela Harmony hand pump an found this to be the most successful out of manual pumps, but depending on how long your planning on feeding you might want an electric pump.

I usually pumped every morning at about 10 when baby slept, but if he was ever awake and feeding I'd do it on the opposite side to him so don't see why it wouldn't work for a bottle at night to get some extra sleep. You'll most likely be engorged the first day or so if you've not fed in the night but things won't take long to settle down when your body realised baby doesn't need the milk then.

Few tips...

Home and bargains have breast milk storage bags that are great quality and cheaper than the branded ones- just make sure u record the date on the bag an use the oldest first.

Freeze the milk flat so it takes less time to defrost. At each feed, we just ran the bag under warm water then popped it in the bottle an warmed it through.

Hope this helps

...also Kellymom is brilliant website for anything related to breast feeding!

They have a calculator to work out how much milk you need per feed ect so worth a look.