How is everyone feeding baby?

[Hayleyandbaby]

I know breast is best but I also know breast feeding is not for me. I'm going to bottle feed in the hospital and when I get out I'm going to express. Everytime I feed the baby I have to express rather than doing it just morning and night or else my milk will stop. I think it's going to be hard work but I really think it's the way forward.

Is anyone else doing this? Or how are you feeding yours? Does my way sound ok or silly?

Best of luck Hayley I'm normally a 32ff/g but am currently a 38g and still have 13 weeks to go so who knows what size I'll be by the end :D

I've fed all three of mine, my last one for a year and as the other ladies have said, it can actually be a lot easier.

You may have already mentioned it but what's your due date?

Well done Hayley! Sorry I've come to this a bit late. I was also uncomfortable about breastfeeding before having dd, having always had issues with my boobs (but for the opposite reason-I'm only an A cup)but once she was born it just clicked into place in my head. I expressed too, and have to say that I found expressing a million times harder than just breastfeeding, plus it's far less dignified to sit there with a machine attached to your breast!
Out of my friends who breastfed, the ones with bigger breasts have on the whole found it much easier to do discretely than I did, small boobs mean you have to hold baby really high up and expose more flesh etc than big ones.

When dd was 5 months old she started to self wean from the breast so I started trying to express in place of her breastfeeds-aaargh the effort nearly killed me! I felt that expressing, washing and sterilising bottles etc on top of the time spent actually feeding left me little time to enjoy dd and even less time to myself.

Expressing some feeds was fine but I couldn't exclusively express so dd soon went on to formula. Do try it if bf doesn't work out for you though, cos there are people it works for-I just wanted you to know how i found it (if only to make you more determined to give bf a fair go lol!).

TBH your midwife's attitude sounds a bit dubious to me, so i'd definitely recommend getting proper support from someone, whether a different midwife or a bf counsellor.

Good luck!

im going to try breast feeding again and hope its 3rd time lucky. with dd1 i fed her for 10 days and it was constant agony, dd2 i fed for 24 hrs and within that amount of time i had started to crack so gave up. i have been told that my positioning is fine and think im just very sensitive. im going to try again but even if its only for a day or so at least i know bubs has got some colostrum and im not going to get hung up on it even though i would love for it to be possible

hayley - i tried to express with my second and gave in after a day as it was a pain, it took for ever. i would give breast feeding a try and if you dont like it then bottle feed and dont worry about it, but you never know you might love it. a lot of my friends have found it easy (and one of them has huge boobs )

Well done Hayley!!

Weblette- I'm due may 13th. Can't wait!!!

I'm definately going with bf as it's what I wanted to do anyway it's just I had no confidence. I think if I go into it very calm and remembering all the benefits it should fall into place. Fingers crossed.

I actually didn't know colostrum existed until this thread and I'm so determined to give baby the benefit of it.

Roll on motherhood, I just can't wait.

Thanks again to everyone, even the things I haven't had time to answer, I'm reading and taking every bit in and it's all helping.

Just had another thought Hayley - I was unsure about breastfeeding when I was pg, I really wanted to bf but I have incredibly sensitive nipples that I hate being touched and I thought that it might cause me problems - in the end it was absolutely fine, my nipples didn't feel oversensitive at all whilst bfing.

I b/f my 1st ds until 6 weeks but couldn't in public so I ended up not going out at all. (Did epress breast milk then bottle fed which helped)

This time with ds 2 (I'm 36 weeks atm) I'm going to, feed in the morning and in the evening/night and then express bottle feed all other feeds during the day.

The thought of b/f in public again is just to much and would put me off b/f at all so I think for us this is the best decision.