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Breastfeeding
gingamom
member
When did you stop pumping?
gingamom
member
I'm thinking of being an EPer when DD is born. I understand it is A LOT of work and takes a lot of time. But i want my babe to have the benefits of breast mild, while I feel that BFing is not for me. I'm willing to make the time and frustration sacrifice to give breast milk to my baby. However, not sure I'll be able to keep up pumping when I go back to work after 3 months----I do a lot of travel and really just stopping for 15-20 minutes every 3-4 hrs is just not very feasible in my line of work.
Just curious how many out there have pumped or even BF'd for the first 3 months and then switched to formula? How did that work out?
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Re: When did you stop pumping?
I think anything you can give you baby is fantastic. I can understand the frustrations of pumping at work, so I won't even try to convince you to try if you really feel it is not condusive to your career! I can pump at work with no issue, BUT if I were in your shoes and wanted to try to go beyond 3 months, I would consider a combination while at home. Plan on bf'ing, but pump a couple or a few times a day to make a freezer stash. If you are certain you cannot maintain bf'ing once back at work, maybe you can have a good size freezer stash to get you another month or 2 after 3 months is up. OF COURSE, this is subject to not creating such an oversupply that your LO has issues (either not getting enough hindmilk or having issues with choking on letdown, etc. But, it can certainly be done. Duriong my 6 month leave, I created (not intentionally) a massive freezer stash without issues to my LO. In fact, I couldn't bf with DD1 and ended up EP'ing. In 7 months of pumping, I managed to accumulate enough milk to get my daughter through to 14 months. Of course, the milk didn't necessary evolve with my child's growth as it would have it I had been bf'ing for the 14 months, but it was still MUCH better than formula would have been.
I've been EPing since DD was 2 weeks old and we've been supplementing with formula since she was about 4 or 5 days old. She is now 10 weeks old. I seem to be able to keep up with all of her feeding needs during the days, but she ends up taking about 5-10 oz of formula in the evening/night time depnding on how long it takes to get her down or if I have a lower output that day. I have no freezer stash.
We've always used Enfamil for supplemenation, simply becuase that's what we had on hand when it was clear that we needed to supplement. (We got a sample container in a gift bag from Buy Buy Baby when we registered there.) DD didn't seem to have any issues with formula vs. BM. She seems to prefer BM, but has never refused formula or reacted to it differently (other than her poop being different, but that's normal).
I go back to work on Thurs and my current goal is to provide BM for her for until she's 12 weeks old. After that, I'm going to take it a week at a time. My job is fine with me pumping at work and my Office Manager pumped at work when she came back from her maternity leave last year so I have a superior who "gets it". Hopefully, this means I can have success continuing to pump long term once I'm back at work, but we'll have to see. I was extemely hard on myself when EBFing didn't work out so I want to set smaller (hopefully more achievable) goals going forward so I'm more likely to be successful at providing BM for her for as long as possible.