Q from new BF mom - nursing vs pumping/bottles

E&B0811

hi ladies. I posted this on PAL but thought I'd also post here since you all seem to be a wealth of information. DD was born 12/6. I am having some trouble with BF, and am considering transitioning to EP or, at least, a combo of pumping/bottles and nursing.

I have had to pump some already due to oversupply issues. I am making so much milk that DD will sometimes choke from the flow and regularly takes some time to latch because of the flow or engorgement. I can get 2 ounces in less than 5 minutes from pumping but it takes me about an hour to get her to nurse for a total of 20-25 minutes. And, really, most times she falls asleep after only finishing on one side at only 15-ish minutes. Then she ends up wanting to nurse almost hourly. Thankfully she is above her birthweight already but, selfishly, the stress of nursing - both the unpredictability of how often and how long she'll nurse as well as worrying that she is getting enough or too much - is really taking its toll on me.

I want to do the best possible for DD but I fear that the exhaustion and frustration of nursing might be greater than the benefits given that I can still give her breast milk through pumping and bottles. DH is for this because it would allow him to be involved while still providing the benefits of breast milk. Too, I could still nurse from time to time if we wanted to. No?

What are your thoughts on pumping vs nursing? If you find EP challenging, What is it about EP (or pumping generally) that is so hard? The time it takes to pump and also feed your LO? The missed bonding from nursing? Does pumping allow YH to be more involved with feeding LO? Does it give you any relief at all from constant feedings?

TIA for any help or insight you might have. I really appreciate it.

TheBorg7of9

I have heard that EPing is horrible. I would hold out trying to make nursing work as long as possible. EP is horrible because feeding will take three times as long. You can to pump (while baby might be crying in the crib?), clean all the pump parts, feed the bottle and then clean the bottles. Also, leaving the house? It would be so difficult!

If you have oversupply you can hold a burp rag (or cloth diaper) to your boob while the milk slows down for a minute.

After she feeds on one side change her diaper to wake her up for side two. I had my husband do that part while i stayed in the chair bI also stripped my babies down to their diapers to keep them awake during feedings. Scratching their heads and feet may also work.

But 15 min is also a pretty long feed anyway. My kids would eat for 15-30 minutes each time.

I would just keep up with nursing. At 6-8 weeks, it will suddenly become so easy.

katka512

Pumping is a ton of work. You also probably won't have oversupply for too long, so pumping may take longer.
I also had oversupply and LO would choke on my milk. I've never felt let down, but I would always lean back to feed to slow the milk flow.
If you want DH to be able to feed LO, you can always pump then have him give it. But doing that for every feed sounds exhausting.
Nursing won't take so long and she will get better as it as she gets older. The first 4-6 weeks are a big adjustment but you'll both get the hang of it.
My LO is 9 months old and she nurses 5 times a day for about 10-15 minutes. Honestly, it's easy now and I love it.
You may want to see an LC who can help you with questions and give tip.

Ivorytower2

I pump at work and nurse whenever I'm with DD. One thing I will say is that I think nursing will get easier. Your supply should regulate by 3 months-- so less issues there and most babies get a lot better and faster at nursing as they get older.

amackattack

I've been EBF for 6 months now and  I say do not make any big decisions until you're 2 months in. Like PP said, once your supply is regulated and your babe gets better and better at latching it will become soooo easy. And believe me, baby will get VERY good at latching. My babe now is on the boob practically before I've even pulled it out. 

The first weeks are so hard. If I could go back the one thing I would do differently is change my expectations of BFing and just expect to spend all my time on the couch, watching netflix, BFing baby. Not to expect a newborn baby to have certain frequencies of eating in the first weeks but go with the flow. I remember being so stressed out because people would come over and expect to see baby and all baby wanted to do was BF every 45 minutes and then it took so long to feed her...I thought we must be doing something wrong. Baby is still trying to figure out what is going on, and so are you. I know it's stressful and it feels like it's all you do, but believe it or not that time passes by so quickly and I actually miss it now. 

I also had a time when I dealt with oversupply and it helped me to manually express into the sink before feeding.

Once we got to 4-6 weeks I started pumping and my H would give baby one bottle every night before bed. By then BF was totally established, she had started with a 4-5 hour stretch of sleep, I was able to build up a small stash, H learned that he is capable of caring for all baby's needs and felt good knowing he could go to the freezer and get milk if he ever needed it, and it really was great bonding for them and a good break for me. It also taught baby to accept a bottle.       

Hang in there and try not to rush it. You're doing an amazing job and you're not going to regret this later!

RachelCA29

I went to EPing for oversupply and over active letdown at about 7 weeks. I was tired of fighting my LO to latch and having us both coved in breast milk after each nursing session. At first it felt so freeing. Because I was already past 6 weeks my supply was established so I started with 6-7 pumping sessions a day. Eventually I had to go down to 4 because I am the primary caregiver to LO so it was hard to watch him and get pumping done. It got very tedious. My whole day was getting ready to pump, pumping and washing bottles and pump parts (I had two sets of parts which helped). There is nothing worse than getting your baby down for the night at 10pm and having to stay up to pump.

My supply started to suffer at about 4 months because I wasn't pumping enough times a day. So I got a nipple shield and decided to get my baby back in the breast. It took 4 very frustrating days but now I nurse and we even dropped the shield within that first week back. My LO won't even take a bottle from me anymore. I think a lot of the issues we had were over active letdown; my baby couldn't handle the force of milk. It's a really hard situation because there isn't much you can do to help it except give your baby time. The older they are the more they like the faster flow. Using a nipple shield got us through the first 6 weeks, and I made my oversupply worse by pumping too much (really bad advice from a couple of LCs that told me if I used a shield I had to pump after each feed).

If your baby is fine with a bottle, temporarily EPing could keep you going until your supply issues resolve.

Brummy14

FWIW, I EPed for nearly two years (my girls were born 11 weeks early, so we worked tirelessly to get them to simply ... eat. By then, I had an EPing schedule DOWN). 

It's not that bad. In fact, there are a lot of perks I loved -- being able to always be in charge of WHEN I pumped. I learned how to multitask a TON while EPing -- I could make dinner, drive a car, I even mastered the bottle feeding-while-simultaneously-pumping. Are there parts to clean? Sure. But, if your options are BFing with extreme difficulty (and you may not be to this point yet, but maybe you are) and EPing, EPing is NOT the worst thing in the world, seriously.

In fact, my pump times became my favorite times of day, especially as the girls got older -- on the weekend when DH was around. I could disappear, baby-free, and still feel like I was doing something productive for them. It was seriously my reprieve. I miss that escape.

Designermomma

EP is hard so I'd try to do what you can to avoid it because it's hard to go back. Pumping in public is much more taboo than BF. If you ever want to leave the house for an extended period, it is incredibly difficult to pack a bunch of bottles, pump, parts and keep it cold all day. I've done it all. I BF, then went back to the hospital with an infection, formula fed while I was there, then EP while I recovered, then went back to BF, but then EP after he got teeth. I'm calling it quits in a few weeks when he turns 1. Yay!

E&B0811

Thanks so much for all the insight ladies. This is all really helpful.

crash916

Personally I hated pumping and loved nursing. Pumping took so much time with setup, pumping, and cleaning up. You should be pumping every time baby has a bottle so it won't free up any time. Over time nursing gets easier.

NADA-H

As someone who pumps 3 times atbwork and sometimes once at home before bed and nurses during evening MOTN and morning i will take nursing over pumping any day! Its exhausting and i absokutely hate it but i'm working full time and want my baby to have my BM while at DC.

Newborns are so sleepy at first whethere they take a bottle or breast feed and eventually they grow out of that and introducing a bottle so early could lead to nipple confusion. If you want to do conbined feeding then u and anyone who will feed baby have to learn to pace feed with a bottle.

The advice is not to introduce a bottle before 4-6 weeks if u want to do combined feeding. Nursing a lot early on will establish a good supply to last. I had oversupply at first and it evened out eventually

E&B0811

NADA-H said:

As someone who pumps 3 times atbwork and sometimes once at home before bed and nurses during evening MOTN and morning i will take nursing over pumping any day! Its exhausting and i absokutely hate it but i'm working full time and want my baby to have my BM while at DC.

Newborns are so sleepy at first whethere they take a bottle or breast feed and eventually they grow out of that and introducing a bottle so early could lead to nipple confusion. If you want to do conbined feeding then u and anyone who will feed baby have to learn to pace feed with a bottle.

The advice is not to introduce a bottle before 4-6 weeks if u want to do combined feeding. Nursing a lot early on will establish a good supply to last. I had oversupply at first and it evened out eventually

What is pace feed?