Breastfeeding and milk and expressing and BLW and going back and sleep - all the things!

[burritofan]

I just had a second interview for a job and I think, without counting chickens, it went pretty well! Whether I get it or not I'll start back at work – at this job or freelance in-house stuff – in February when DD will be 9 months. Her dad will take care of her full-time till she starts nursery age one.

Currently she co-sleeps, wakes 8,000 times a night and is resettled by boob, so taking a lot of milk overnight. She started on solids, BLW, a fortnight ago. Some is going in judging by the nappies, and she's very interested, but also not always hungry (because of 8,000 night feedings) or too tired to eat, because she's crap at naps.

We've never had the opportunity to try her on bottles because she feeds every two hours in the day and between that and the nap battles, there's not a lot of expressing time. I've managed it here and there and can express pretty well manually; have an electric pump waiting to be put to use.

Really not sure how returning to work is going to, well, work, in terms of milk and how much to express. Don't want to do formula – ideally I want to protect my supply to continue extended breastfeeding for before/after work and on a non-nursery day for as long as she wants it.

Night-weaning may or may not help sleep... but it would certainly cut her milk intake so she might take on more solids. Then again she might up the milk in the day and DP would do nothing but offer her expressed bottles and I'd be pumping 24/7.

Not sure what I'm asking really, and this could fit under sleep/weaning/parenting/AIBU to expect feeds to be more spaced out at six months. Success stories of the "I worried about this too but it was all fine" ilk would be gratefully received; ditto advice: I don't know where to start! With improving solids intake? Night weaning? Trying to stretch out her day feeds? (She can sometimes go 2.5 or 3 hours before chirruping for boob, but rarely.)

Will it all just magically work out so I can end up doing a before/after work feed + bedtime (fed to sleep) (and probably all through the night and reverse cycling...) and DP maybe only has to do a lunchtime bottle? Help!

Firstly, you have a gold standard childcare arrangement in place which is dp. I had my dp do two weeks shared parental leave when my dd (my third baby) was 5 months when I returned to work. So all the bottle thing was up to him and that’s the best way.

Secondly it might be very tiring but it will get better quite quickly.

It will all be fine

I suggest your focus is on increasing solids which will happen anyway by 9 months. You might find that even if you leave a bottle your baby doesn’t really have any milk during the day and waits for you instead which is fine. A cup of water during the day is ok for hydration.

When you start back you may need to express a few times during the day but this can reduce over time, I was expressing once a day by 9 months and stopped at around 11 months. But I started back sooner and reduced over time . You don’t want to get mastitis!

I also started a new job, it’s quite a brave thing to do when you start out having to talk about such things as pumping etc but in time hopefully will be worth it!

I also Cosleep and that’s the biggest issue for me. If I could have started a bit later I would have done and tried to focus on sleep in the meantime. Now I have bad sleep and 5am starts which is frankly exhausting but hopefully will get cot sorted soon !

Good luck and congratulations

It will all be fine
Thank you for this! Exactly what I needed to hear. And v good advice overall, much appreciated.

I agree with pp. Although I would skip the bottle an give a baby beaker instead. At 9 months they tend to eat more solids. I breastfeed untill DS was 2year's so I know the night feeds are like constant. I would express your milk and put it in a beaker. That worked for me. My DS did not like bottle's.