Going back to breastfeeding after expressing

[newmummalion]

Hello all

I have been expressing milk for the last eight weeks or so as my baby has been unable to have it and he's been having a special formula. He's 9 weeks old tomorrow.

He has 10 more days of formula before he can go back to breast milk exclusively and I've been able to let him suckle for short amounts of time the last couple of days to help him re-learn, which he's been amazing at!

While expressing I've been getting about 60ml every three hours. I've not been waking in the night to express. He's been having 60ml formula every three hours but it's concentrated to 1kcal/1ml so I'm guessing he'll need a bigger volume of breast milk.

Can anyone advise how I can go about boosting my supply to make sure he gets enough? I can't wait to be able to feed him again!

Thanks for any advice you can give me. :)

P.s. I've been expressing by hand for the last 4 weeks or so as pumping became uncomfortable.

Just keep putting him on the boob as much as possible to help boost supply. I imagine he'll cluster feed loads to start with but the more he feeds, the more milk will come. I would advise contacting a lactation consultant for support and also checking out 'the milk meg' Facebook page. She has a lot of good advice! Good luck!

Your body is amazing at adapting the supply and demand. As he's 9 weeks, you should be early enough to easily increase the supply.

I'd feed him when he asks and offer both boobs. Babies are more efficient at getting out milk than pumps are, so there should be more than 60ml available every 3 hours, however if he's not getting enough, he'll ask for a feed after less than 3 hours. This will then help you increase supply.

There's some good advice in some threads in the "Feed the world section", "Infant Feeding".

I had to express as my baby was born early and in hospital; by expressing I couldn’t produce enough to meet what she needed but as soon as I started directly breastfeeding her my supply increased very quickly to meet her demand; there was quite a bit of cluster feeding at first though.

Thanks everyone. I'm definitely going to check out the Facebook page.

Today is the first day of proper breastfeeding as he's doing really well. Doing about 10 mins on each side every couple of hours. He basically feeds and sleeps and is a lot more settled so I'm guessing that means he's satisfied which makes me happy.

Just need to hope he keeps putting on weight now. He has an NG tube and the docs say he can be 'topped up' via that if necessary.

Thanks for your tips. :)