expressing breast milk

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Hi

I'm 16+2 with baby number 2, I BF my DS until he was 7 months old and only very reluctantly gave up as he got teeth at 4 months and learned to bite at 4.5months
I was determined he would get EBM until he was 12 months old but I just never seemed to be able to express enough, I was attached to my breast pump for what felt like 24/7 and could only get off 3-4oz at a time, and he was a little guzzler.
I tried after a bath- with pics of my DS- while holding my DS- while feeding my DS from the other breast- mornings- nights.

Is there ANY advice anyone can give me for next time? I hope to feed the next one until 12 months but will definitely start stocking up sooner!!

Thanks in advance x

You can bfeed with teeth. It's very common for them to bite when the teeth first come through. It's a new sensation and sometimes they're sore. Teething gel gets rid of the soreness and removing them from the breast immediately and stopping the feed if they bite teaches them the consequence. This done consistently generally stops the biting.

DD has 20 teeth. I am still bfing.

Expressing is one of those things. Sometimes despite doing everything you can, some women never manage to express a lot. And you may find expressing much easier this time.

Kellymom is an excellent site.

Congratulations on your pregnancy and for breastfeeding as long as you did and wanting to feed to a year.

Babies all learn to bite at about the age you mention. It is a phase and would stop after a while even if you did nothing (much) about it. There are little things you can do to circumvent the biting but some biting inevitably will occur. It just takes some courage to get past the phase.

If you visit www.kellymom.com and but 'biting' and maybe 'teeth' in its search engine, it will bring up lots of good information on this developmental phase.

Expressing full time otoh is a lot more work that working through the biting phase. You didn't do anything 'wrong' necessarily with expressing, it is just that pumps do not stimulate the milk production and remove milk from the breast as efficiently as a normal baby can.

That read as fairly abrupt. I apologise. Bfing is very emotive and it must have been hard to have to stop and to struggle with expressing.

Your next baby will be a different baby though. Maybe s/he won't get teeth early/won't bite. Maybe expressing will be easier?

You can hire big super industrial pumps I think and hand expressing is often surprisingly effective.

I didn't read it as abrupt thanks for the replies

I did fight through 3 months of biting but on the advice from my breastfeeding group I used to push him into the breast to get him to release but in the end couldn't take the pain and caused some nasty gashes by pulling him off! thought I'd be off to A&E with my nipple in an ice cream tub at times!

See this is what I love about mumsnet...I'll I'll research biting on Kellymom rather than looking into expressing.

I'm very stubborn determined and won't give up without a fight again, I'm just so determined to get to a year!

Thanks again
xx

showofhands- just for the record, I had a medela pump that was meant to be all singing all dancing but as you said hand expressing worked much better for me I just never got enough

xx

My DD started the whole biting thing around 4.5 months, I used to put my little finger in gently to unlock her jaw whilst loudly saying 'no' (not shouting) then I would put her down in her cot and ignore her for a few minutes. That soon put a stop to it. Sometimes you can tell when they are going to bite and get your finger in early, for example if they have been feeding a while and breast is almost empty they sometimes get frustrated and bite. You can also let them numb their gums before with a teething ring from the fridge/freezer, cold mouth on nipple might also be soothing. Still breastfeeding at 11.5 months with 6 teeth and four more cutting ...

Hi I had lots of difficulty getting the expressing to work (1/2oz at a time some days!)
I found the medela pump worked best for me, and to begin with I had to do it in the morning while DS fed from one side. Single sided feeding also helped to make sure I was producing enough. I also just froze whatever I could get off so I could eventually save up enough for a feed.
Dare I say it but I actually found her whose name shall not be mentioned on mumsnet's section on expressing and Bfing very helpful. Also agree kellymom is great and la leche league may have a bf counsellor in your area you could contact
good luck!

I think it will be much easier to teach your baby not to bite that to express for months on end. Expressing is hard and I also found it hard to get more than a couple of oz at a time. As others say breast pumps just remove the milk they don't stimulate it in the way a baby can.

I stopped feeding my DD at 6 months when I went back to work, she had teeth and didn't bite. I stopped feeding my DS at 5 months, he bit me a few times and he didn't have teeth. He bit when the milk wasn't coming fast enough, and he prefered bottles anyway. As much as I think breastfeeding is important, at that point formula was best for both of us.

GF has ideas i her book about expressing & increasing milk supply so you could try that?

Definitely try a different pump if you weren't getting much out last time - I always found the best time was first thing in the morning before feeding DD, but even at top production I never managed more than 5oz at a go. I'm borrowing a friend's pump this time - it's a double one - and see how that goes.

I agree with allsheep- DD bit me once and I screamed (not deliberately, it was painful!), scared the life out of her and she never did it again. We carried on till 13 mo when she had 14 teeth. Never got the hang of expressing but I'm a SAHM so never needed to.

I saw some great videos on the (I think) Stanford Medical website and they said that hand expressing after pumping gets almost as much milk out again. Breast massaging whilst pumping also helps apparently. They've really looked into it as they have an premie baby unit where a lot of the mums have to express as the babies are too small to breastfeed at first.

I was also told that if you're exclusively expressing, you really need to express once at night to avoid reducing your supply.

brilliant help, thanks everyone.

mumNWLondon- I found expressing such a pain, he fed so frequently that I found myself a slave to the pump when not seeing to him, it was so disheartening when there was so little produced and I loved feeding him, I don't know if there's any scientific facts behind this but I found I had so much energy while I was breastfeeding, he fed up to every 20minutes during growth spurts but was a very happy contented little boy I just offered when he asked and he guzzled. I'd much prefer to keep feeding than go onto bottles, for me it was just so much easier to get a breast out than sort out a bottle.

Allsheep and debka I had a really supportive Bf group I went to who suggested the same, he was a very spontaneous biter and I always felt so guilty when I made him jump with a yelp.

Thanks again for all the advice I'll be checking out all the recommended sites and links and will be trying everything in my power to get to 12 months.

I'll be going into it with fresh eyes as I know this one is a whole new human being and I can't wait to meet them!!

xx

I think some hospitals loan out more industrial type pumps (that sounds quite extreme, but I think they are more efficient?). Also you could get a double pump? I think you will find it difficult to express as often and as long as you would need to, with 2 children. I had problems bfing last time and expressed lots, but couldn't keep it up in the end - life got in the way. This time round I am just hoping I don't get either thrush or mastitis, although at least this time I will know what to do.

Some babies don't get teeth til much later than that - I am a bit nervous of that too as DS didn't get teeth til about 7 months and I'd already stopped by then.

Good luck!