Expressing for 30 weeker

[dancestomyowntune]

Does anyone have any tips for expressing for my newborn? She was born yesterday, by c section and is in neonatal but doing amazingly well. The only thing I appear to be able to do for her at the moment is to express breast milk but it seems like such a small amount. I have so far had four attempts, and got tiny, tiny amounts each time but I wondered if anyone had any top tips to stimulate flow? I have never hand expressed before this baby, having always formula fed, but my beautiful, fragile 30 weeker is going to need every bit of help I can give her!

My baby was a premie as well and my supply was low. It took me ages to build up a stable supply. So my advice is keep expressing what you can and obviously use formula when needed. As long as your baby gains weight either ff or bf is fine.

I have just replied on your other thread!

I did this because it felt like the only thing I could do at 29 weeks. Can you rent/borrow a hospital grade breast pump to establish your supply. I found the NICU nurses really helpful.

I found it very hard at first but persevered, pumping every three hours, my daughter eventually learned to breastfeed at 5 months old and we didn't look back.

You can only do your best dances, you have a lot on your plate right now, mine was my first child so I didn't have anyone else to worry about at home.

Thank you both. So far the midwifes have said hand expressing is best at the moment so that they don't waste or lose any in the electric pumps tubing, but once my milk comes in they will teach me how to do it with the electric pumps. I have managed to get some, and the midwifes were really impressed, because obviously my body still thinks it's got another 10 weeks to go!

I remember that dances, managing to produce about 4 ml and the lovely nurses treating it like gold dust and making me feel like I had given her a gallon of the stuff!

Congratulations ( though know from experience it all feels wonderful and awful at the same time). I had a 30-seeker by c-section too and main advice would be just to keep at it. As one scary but lovely NICU nurse told me, if you want to breastfeed him in the future, you now have to make pumping your job. So express every 2/3 hours in the day and every three hours through the night (to be honest I got v sore if I left it any longer), get on to an electric pump as soon as possible, double pump (so empty both boobs then pump again), your baby's tummy is so small and they start them off with such small quantities that anything you do manage is brilliant and probably more than enough. I was lucky after about 4 days to start producing way more than was needed so was able to donate and to have lots of frozen stuff to bring home with us and to be able to switch to just breastfeeding when he was 14weeks old (he turned 1 on Tuesday and I'm still BFing). Keep at it and the fact that you are already on MN asking advice means you're doing wonderfully. Best of luck.