Preparing to breastfeed

[elderflower2811]

Hi ladies,

I'm 8 months pregnant and have a toddler. With my first I had a traumatic labour and lost 3 litres of blood. This meant that bf was so much harder/ more painful/ milk took much longer to come but somehow I pushed through and I managed to bf my baby for over a year. I really want to bf my second too but I still shiver thinking about the months I spent feeding on demand all day and night long and bf for 9 hours straight to make my milk come in. I wonder if there's anything I could be doing now to make the milk come in faster? Are there any foods / milk /etc I could be having so that my body is more ready?

TIC xxxx

Nope. Nothing you can do now. You could collect colostrum if you wanted. Make sure you drink plenty straight after the birth. 2nd time is much easier, your boobs know what they are doing.

You could go to a group like la Leche league so you know where your support will be. You could also make sure you have some helplines in your phone.
Good luck and I really hope it works out the way you want it.

I've found breastfeeding easier the 2nd time round. Milk came in quicker think it was 24 hours after. You could always mix feed after a couple of weeks if that easier with toddler.

I found breast feeding way easier second time round, at least one of us knew what we were doing this time. Just keep hydrated and stock up on snacks and lansinoh. Good luck!

Yes! Do colostrum expression from 36 weeks - I used syringes. I didn't actually feed her the colostrum but it made me confident with expression and also meant I had loads in the first days. No idea if it helped my milk but it came in day 2/3 and I have loads. The midwives all said they'd never seen anyone with so much colostrum and that they highly recommended everyone to do it (as does my friend who is a consultant OBGYN and did it for her baby too). Mind you, bf still hurt like a bugger to begin and there was obviously cluster feeding but it definitely helped. Good luck!x