Wake up to pump?

klirwin82

I'm probably jinxing it to ask, but last night my 8 week old slept 10pm - 5am for the first time. I woke up engorged but not in pain or anything...normally he wakes to eat at 3am. Will it kill my supply to drop that MOTN feed/pump? Will my supply just regulate to the STTN schedule? On the one hand there's plenty of women who EBF, no pumping, and obviously aren't waking the baby forcing it to eat at 3am to keep supply up. On the other hand I want to make sure I don't kill my supply for when I go back to work next month...but damn, I need some sleep.

KonaCoffeeBean

I wouldn't know anything about having a baby STTN, but if I were your position I would probably start by only pumping every other night, and seeing how it goes.

harmonicbabe26

This will prob go against a lot of people's advice... Yes, I would get up to pump.
Two reasons:
1. 8wo is REALLY young to be sleeping that long, basically STTN. It will NOT last, I'm 99% sure of that... If you don't use thay milk, yea your supply will regulate down. It shouldn't kill your supply overall, but 8wpp is really early to be going all night without feeding.

2. Pumping at night for a while is the fastest way to build up a freezer stash, if you are interested in having one. Prolactine levels are the highest at night and you should have the most milk then. I'd milk this situation (pun intended) to get a little stash going.

Obv, uninterrupted sleep has its appeal too...so ultimately you decide.

StephanieMartin519

My kiddo is also right around 8w and has been sleeping lots too, last night 10:30-7:15am! I get up to pump once and usually before she gets up and like pp said--throw em in the freezer! Good luck

ldmw

I would get up to pump. My baby STTN at 7 weeks and I still got up to pump 2-3 times a night to maintain and build a good supply. MOTN is critical for milk production.

rebecca.driver@gmail.com

Yay! For baby sleeping! My little one slept about the same pattern starting around 8 weeks also. Each week we let her sleep one more hour. We had a few weeks where she went through growth spurts and she would wake in the middle of the night but those passed.

I too was nervous about losing my supply and the engorgement in the morning was ridiculous. I found it easiest to train my body to wake up around 2-3 am to pump then go back to bed. It really helped when I started back work. My supply got so insane that we had to invest in a deep freezer. Now that I'm back at work I have dropped the middle of the night pumping and instead pump before I go to bed. She goes down about 2 hours before I do so that gives me good supply. I finally don't wake up with soaked tshirts and sheets! Yay!

delujm0

My 10 week old has only ever given us one 7 hour stretch and a handful of 6 hour stretches...usually it's 3 or 4 hours. So I'm jealous. But yes, I'd wake and pump to build a stash. I stay up an extra 10 minutes after every night feed now in order to do that. I wish I didn't have to, but the stash makes me feel better about heading back to work in two weeks.

qtjo5

My 7 week old will wake up once at night and DH will give him a bottle of breast milk. I wake up to pump and I can get about 8 oz. I will not give up that pump time even though I could sleep through the night.

marijaa333

I would get some sleep if you can. Sweet, sweet sleep.  My 3.5 month old wakes up every 3-4 hours but he doesn't eat enough to empty my breasts, so i end up having to hand express in the middle of the night just to get back to sleep.