Feeding pumped milk in the hospital

[missmc12xo]

24 and pregnant with my first baby, not wanting to breastfeed but wanting to pump and feed from a bottle but don't know if it's possible? Has anyone done this before???

Sorry if this is a stupid question feeling overwhelmed.

Thanks x

Hi, I think it might be possible, but it will be difficult without any attachement to the breast from the baby. You’ll need to pump for 15-20 mins every 2 hours to mimic the same amount of milk removal as your new baby. I’m sure there will be other people with more experience than me along soon who might have other advice etc.

They'll very likely have proper strong/ double breastpumps you can use. Or at least they did for both of mine 7+ years ago.

Also was given little bottles and teats.

Why don't you want to bf?

Pumping then feeding BM seems to have all the disadvantages of bottle-feeding.

My DS was in SCBU for a week and could only take expressed milk. But I over pumped and ended up with too much milk which really hurts.
It's absolutely possible but you have to work hard to get enough and be prepared to be uncomfortable

It is possible, but I suggest you take into hospital with you a pump from home and all you need to sterilise.

Also, as someone who had no choice but to pump for months, it is HARD. Pumping is the worst of both worlds. So (assuming you have good reasons which you don't need to share with us!) really plan now for your support system. My partner had to do all the tube then bottle feeds as otherwise I was literally just pumping, sterilising, feeding her, repeat, 24/7. No break. Research sterilisers and buy shit loads of bottles so you're never scrabbling around for clean ones.

Hi - you can do this if you wish. Only thing I would say is have a plan for the first feed - they may come out starving in which case you wouldn’t necessarily have time to express before you wanted to feed them, so maybe have a bottle of formula there - I brought a 4 pack of aptamil ready prepared bottles into the hospital, so all you had to do was unwrap the bottle lids etc and it was ready to
go. If you didn’t want to go down the formula route you could breastfeed the first one and then express after that? But basically pumping can take 20ish minutes and you might have a screaming baby! In the early days you won’t be producing much and the baby won’t be taking in much as their stomachs are tiny, so colostrum harvesting might be your best bet for the first few days until your milk comes in. You can do this at home and bring in syringes, just Google for a full description. Hope this helps, best of luck!

Don’t- that’s the route to a miserable time.

I’m very pro breastfeeding, but if you can’t feed from the breast don’t bother. Life is far too short for the faff of pumping and bottles. Fuck that.

Are you wanting to do this long term? Its definitely the worst of all worlds in my opinion, but i appreciate there are reasons why you may not want to breastfeed directly

Have a look at the kellymom website and look for sections on Exclusive Pumping. Its American but lots of US women do this due to the short mat leave available to them and it has loads of useful advice.

I'd recommend investing in a double pump that sits inside your bra otherwise you will spend your whole day attached to the wall. I have an Elvie Stride that i really like. My lactation consultant also recommended Pippeta as a cheaper alternative.

As pp have said, you will need to be really disciplined about pumping every 2 hrs, including during the night in the early days to build up your milk supply.

I would definitely take your own pump and sterilised bottles. You can't rely on the hospital. Even if they say they have a pump somebody could be using it.

It’s possible but a) you will need to rent a hospital grade pump to get milk supply going b) you will need to be lucky and have boobs that respond ok to a pump - many women find they can produce milk for a baby but not much for a pump and c) as pp say, exclusive pumping is seriously hard work taking up loads of time, and most can’t keep it up long term.

It can work well as a short term solution eg to keep supply up if you can’t BF for a bit. But breastfeeding is so much simpler and easier if you are able to. By all means pump and bottle feed one or two feeds a day to allow someone else a turn and give yourself a rest but trying to do it for all feeds is knackering.x

Your colostrum- the first milk you make for your baby doesn't need pumping, you can hand express and feed from a cup or syringe. After that, it's pump pump pump to get your supply up to match what your baby needs.
The only up side (other than the benefits if you baby getting your milk) is that your bottles and equipment don't need sterilising like formula bottles would.

I did it for ds4 for 5 months as he had a cleft lip and palate. Tbh it was a nightmare but I felt like I should do it as I breastfed my older 3. He fed for an hour every 4 hours and I would pump for an hour each time too.

I've done it 3 times over, due to none of my babies latching. It's not fun, and I wouldn't recommend setting out with this as your preference unless you have very strong reasons and are prepared for the additional faff and stress. I would never have done it with baby no.2 and 3 had it not been for the guilt that I did it for baby no.1! I did it for 6 months for 1st, then only 6 weeks with 2nd and 3rd. I've pumped in every situation you can imagine, weddings, car on motorway, parks under a blanket. You can't miss a pump and it's a bloody nightmare doing it anywhere outside the house.

I honestly would avoid if you can! It's such a faff.
Had problems with both mine latching on. Breast pump was provided in hospital. Managed 6 weeks with the first (but was also topping up with formula as my supply was low) and 4 days with my second.

Hi,
Thanks all, will maybe just formula feed after reading comments, will definitely try and collect colostrum if I can however know a few people who haven't been able to do so thankyou all x

Why not just bf, op?

I seen you're original question but was hesitant to answer as I know people have strong feelings towards breastfeeding but just don't know if I am strong enough to do it exclusively, would want support and for the feedings to be done equally by me and dad, I'm just a new parent so don't want to seem like I am saying either pumping or bf is easier it was just a thought I had x

As others have said, you might want to reconsider. Pumping is the worst of both worlds. I did it for 10 months before i had to stop. I wanted to bf but couldn't due to latching issues. It was horrible.
With bf, you hold your baby, they bf and then they happily sleep. You can the sleep too ( and you will want to). Or do whatever.
With pumping:you hold and feed a bottle to the baby (or maybe you dh does this bit, that's the only bonus). Once baby falls asleep, you then get on the pump for 15-20mins. Not painful but not a pleasant feeling either. Also can't cuddle the baby during this time. Then once done, go wash the bottles and the pump and sterilise them. All in all, at least 30-40 mins of baby's sleep wasted.

Like i said, i did this for 10 months as I had no choice. But it destroyed me. 2 years later, I am still recovering. You are younger so maybe it won't be so hard for you. If you still want to do it, i highly recommend renting a medela hospital grade pump, it's about 50£pm but worth it as it makes everything much faster. I also had a commercial medela, can't even begin to compare them.

Whatever you decide, good luck!

I understand from what you've said how challenging it must've been thankyou for sharing x

Have only briefly skimmed over the comments but they are very similar to what I got when I posted about the same thing last year.

I’m here to tell you, I did it! Not once did I directly breastfeed but I fed my baby for almost 6 months. By the end he was getting formula too but my supply was still there. In the first couple of days I relied a bit on formula too until things got going. The thing I was most clueless about was what was I going to do in hospital! I did colostrum harvesting and had a good bag of frozen syringes to take in with me so he had those during the first night. By the next morning he was very hungry and the syringes didn’t seem to be touching the sides so I opened one of my little instant formula bottles. I think I just had an extremely hungry baby though, most should have been full of what I’d given him.

I took my electric pump in with me but didn’t use it until I was home. So my baby was born on Monday lunch time and I used it on Wednesday afternoon. I couldn’t believe it when I took the pump off and there was actually milk in it! I did it every 3 hours and put any spare milk I didn’t need in freezer bags. I can’t remember the exact timings as it went on but by maybe 3 months I cut out the middle of the night pump (because he wasn’t getting up). I would have to get up really early the next morning to do it though or I’d be in a bit of pain with the amount of milk that was there.

Yes it was hard but it was what I set out to do and I’m so proud of myself that I managed it! I could have kept going but I had the Elvie and in the end I would be putting it on thinking it had latched properly and I’d sit for 15 minutes only to see it was empty and it hadn’t been on right 🤦🏻‍♀️ This was what eventually made me give up! My aim was never to get anywhere near as far as 6 months though so I was delighted to have done that much.

My tips would be:

• Get a hands free pump like the Elvie or similar
• Have tops you can slip your pump into without everyone seeing.
• Buy two sets of the bottles and attachments for the pump so you aren’t having to wash bits in the middle of the night! Getting up to pump is bad enough but pumping and cleaning at that time is even worse 😩
• Buy a lot of breast pads
• Do colostrum harvesting if you can. I didn’t start long before my baby was born but I do think that made mine start off so ‘easily’.
• Dont be put off by anyone asking you to justify why you’re doing it that way. It seems people accept breast feeders or non-breast feeders with no judgement these days but whenever you say you’re only pumping it’s meant with a whole load of unwanted feedback about how you won’t manage it! You will! 🙌🏼

Thankyou so much for this, and taking the time to explain so well it's so appreciated x

Probably because she wants the baby to have the benefits of breast milk but without the dependency of being the only one who can feed/settle.
Which is perfectly valid.

Oh and if you do colostrum harvesting, after the first week or so, once it’s coming out a bit easier it is so much easier to collect it in a tiny cup then syringe up the drops from there. It’s so hard to do with one hand and collect the drops directly onto the syringe. I took the sealed sterilised syringes and beakers into hospital and did it once or twice when I had privacy but again felt a bit self conscious and embarrassed doing it when the nurses were around when the obvious thing to do is to put your baby directly on. So was kind of waiting til I was hiding behind a curtain to do it 🙈 Heat also majorly helps so trying it after a shower at first makes it easier. It starts off veryyy slowly

It is totally valid but much easier to breastfeed and then pump sometimes. If you start on a bottle of pumped breast milk early it tends to be easy to introduce.

You can exclusively pump but it’s hard work. It’s the worst of both worlds - you are doing the work of breastfeeding with none of the benefits to yourself. I harvested colestrum as there was a high chance we would be separated after birth. Colestrum is amazing stuff so look it up to motivate yourself. But if breastfeeding hadn’t worked out for me I wouldn’t have been motivated to pump long term.