Pumping to maintain?

sixres

I'm feeding DS formula for a week to figure out allergy problems =(.... how often should I pump a day just to maintain some sort of supply?  He was going between 5 and 8 hours between feedings at night, so I'm doing 8 then.  But what about during the day.  He was going 2-3.  Is 4 ok in between pumping sessions?  I'm saving it just in case I can use it again or to donate if I can't.  I have PCOS, so I think I have plenty of milk, I just don't want it to go down too much.  And I was pumping twice a day during my half days at work already (4 weeks so far). You pumping ladies rock by the way, it's not so much fun to do it all the time!!

rease.

i would pump every time your baby feeds to maintain what he will need when you go back to bf.

im kinda confused about you feeding formula to find out about allery problems. is there a reason you are doing that, rather than just cutting out dairy products to start with? Im just wondering, I know nothing about allergies and bm.

sixres

Well, he's eating differently now cause formula is more filling, so he's lasting between 3 and 4 hours between.  So, I suppose that's good enough. 

I cut out dairy, soy, wheat, eggs, and nuts for 3 weeks and we didn't see a change, so now he's on Alimentum formula to hopefully give his GI tract a break and to see if he has normal diapers.  Then next week if there's been a change, I'll try BM again and hopefully he'll stay ok.  If not, we'll go back to formula and I'll try again 2 weeks later....basically if my BM gives him the problems, I'll keep pumping as long as I can to hopefully BF him again once the allergy or irritation stops with BM.

rease.

I see. I was wondering because my babies poop is sometimes green (from the imbalance of hind/fore milk) but sometimes even when she totally drains one breast it doesnt help right away so i have thought maybe there is an allergy there and the last two days I have been thinking about cutting out food to see if that helps.

Good luck finding out the problem and thanks for the info!