Intro and Question about pumping routine

Texasgurly0313 · September 2014

First of all, I've gotten so much information from lurking this board, so thank you ladies!

A little about me and DS. I am active duty military and currently on maternity leave plus an extra two weeks. DS is 5 1/2 weeks old, and we struggled with BFing at the beginning. He had low blood sugars at birth due to me having Gestational Diabetes, and he was in the NICU for the majority of our 48 hour stay in the hospital. Our main priority was getting his BS back up, so we gave him formula in the NICU, and he did get some colostrum. When my milk came in, I pumped to help establish my supply, and we worked on his latch. It clicked for us a couple of weeks ago, and we have been EBF (with one bottle at night for his vitamins) since then. He is 2 lbs above his birth weight and growing every day.

When I go back to work, my flight will be on the night rotation, so I will be working 13 hour overnight shifts (have to be at work at 5:30 PM and will get home around 6:30 AM). Right now DS is feeding an average of every 3-4 hours at night and occasionally every 5. I'm trying to figure out a pumping schedule for when I go back, so DH can have milk to give him while I am at work. I plan on feeding on demand when I'm at home during the day (using side lying so I don't lose too much sleep). I have read that DH (he will be staying at home with him) would need 1 oz for every hour I'm away, which would be around 13 oz a day. My flight chief has told me that I can go home and feed him as mission allows, and sometimes we get breaks to go work out. But I would like to be as prepared as possible.

Would I just start pumping after he eats at night so I can get in that routine? I'm gonna start keeping track of the average times he eats so I can get an idea of when I would need to go pump at work. I'm worried about creating an oversupply. I switch to days in January, so my schedule will be changing again then (we switch between shifts every three months).

Texasgurly0313 · September 2014

I have enough in a freezer stash right now to cover the first couple of nights while I figure out the schedule. I was EP for the first couple of weeks and I had a bit of an oversupply, so I froze that milk.

That does make sense though. I'm already giving him one bottle around bedtime and I do pump to replace that feeding and use the milk that I pump to feed him that next day. I get between 2.5-3 oz on average at that time. He usually wakes up around 4 AM to eat, so I can start pumping after that feeding.

Even before DS was born, DH would transition to nights with me when I switched, so he is used to the schedule already thank goodness. And I'm going back the last day of a three day weekend, and my flight chief has already told me that day I can use to figure out how when pumping is gonna work.

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