FTM - breast feeding / pumping

[MTX818]

Hi all!

FTM here!
Baby is currently 3 weeks!

Had my first Health Visitor home visit check today. Baby gaining weight and no concerns with check up!

I’m exclusively breastfeeding but also recovering from my emergency c-section. I started only pumping once a day as my husband wanted to do the night feed to allow me to rest and recover more. I spoke to the midwife team about this which they didn’t raise any concerns.

However when I mentioned this to the health visitor, she said that I shouldn’t really do this and that I should wake up to do all the feeds.
I do the last breast feed before bed. Our baby has one feed at night time (3/4am) with the bottle of breast milk. Then I take over again in the early morning with breastfeeding.
Unfortunately, she said I shouldn’t have started pumping and that my husband shouldn’t have offered to help with feeds.

I know the NHS website says to start pumping after 6 weeks but we only started to pump breast milk for 1 overnight feed as my husband wanted to help ..

Just wanted to know if any parents have done this? Any advice/thoughts on this?

You haven’t done anything wrong, if your baby is feeding well and gaining weight you don’t need to worry.
You can keep doing what you’re doing or if you did want to stop the expressed feed you would just breastfeed instead and your supply will increase after a few days.
If you’re a breastfeeding purist you would probably not express at all and want to feed more in the evening and overnight because that’s when you tend to have more milk and it encourages your supply, but in reality breastfeeding on demand is exhausting and if your DH doing the bedtime feed for you so you can rest is working for your family then that’s all that matters.

Fellow combo bf/express feeder here. We started from 1 or 2 weeks and any bumps in the road I’ve come to, the info for combination feeding/expressing in this country is so out dated. People tell you it doesn’t work but we are 18 months in and never had any problems.

What she is referring to is that the night feeds are the control centre of your supply. Theoretically ‘missing’ that feed may impact your supply - but if you are already expressing enough to have a bottle for that feed, it doesn’t seem to be an issue for you. If you notice your supply dwindling or baby’s appetite becomes more than you’re making for that feed, you can always increase your supply via extra pumping, supplements or through diet.

As a PP said, and I like this term, if you were a bf purist you probably wouldn’t have done this in the first place so the HV advice sounds like she has not read the room.

Good on your for making BF work for you and your family and congrats on your baby 💐

I expressed from two weeks and both had expressed milk from this age. If it's working don't worry

I EBF both of mine for 14 months each. I never expressed or pumped because it just wouldn’t work for me. No actual baby attached meant no let down.

Did it actually help you, having DH do a bottle feed? Did you not wake up anyway?