Survey: How Much Milk Do You (Did You) Pump At Work? - Page 2

[AnnaNova]

this thread is so close to my heart...
i had to start working when my son was about 4mo
and it takes a LOT of work to make it work... i had a decent freezer stash before i started, but i dont want to rely to heavily on it and am trying to put back whatever is taken out when im not there. with a decent freezer stash, i didnt catch right away that the baby was overfed when i wasnt there...
as you can imagine, he liked it, because bottles are so much easier!!!
when i caught it, there stash had already gone down considerably.
where i work they are not really supportive (although at least tolerant) of pumping, i only get 2 20 min breaks and no lunch
during those breaks i can pump about 4 oz each time, so i have about 8 total. whats sad is that i have plenty of milk, to the point that when my son eats, he can even start choking, but can i get it out??? no...
if baby's intake is watched carefully, this is about how much he eats when im not there...
recently he started developing nipple preference, so that added to our struggle... my mom who is now with the baby when im at work, spoon feeds him, droplet feeds him and tries other less pleasant for the baby than a bottle options... agh
sorry for the rant, it just seems like my universe revolves around pumps, bmilk, bottles and ounzes now and it is soooo not what i want to be worried about.

[kayjay]

I started back part time when DS was 8 weeks old, and I'd get about 10 ounces and stop there. Total oversupply and I didn't want to exacerbate it. I had plugged ducts all the time.

At 3.5 months he started refusing the bottle mostly, and it was a good day if he took 4 or 5 ounces while I was gone.

I started nursing him twice before I left for work...once when he got up, then a little over an hour later before I left. At work I pump once or twice and I get 5 to 7 ounces (and I still have to freeze some of it). I'm only gone from the house for 8 hours but I work 5 days a week and a little from home on the weekends.

I kind of encouraged him to reverse cycle because of it, and at 10 months he still wakes to eat before I go to bed, and at least one or two more times the rest of the night.

It was so much easier on me once he started eating solids at 6 months because then I didn't worry about him not taking the bottle well.

On weekends I nurse him as much as he wants and I'm able to pump more on Mondays.

[aran]

I WOHMed when DS1 was 3 mo to 10 mo and pumped 10-13 ounces in three sessions a day (I was away from DS1 for about 10 hours including my long commuting time). I would time it so that I was "full" again when I got home and he could nurse immediately then.

I also did daily oatmeal, fenugreek, and domperidone, because I had early supply issues.

Most notably, my PISA was not strong enough to keep my supply up (pumped less milk = left me not quite empty = supply went down) and I had to switch to a Lactina (bought it off Ebay). The Lactina was so much more comfortable and quiet too!

[physmom]

I pump between 9-14 oz during the day. Although, i've occassionally pumped only 6 if I get to work late and get in an extra nursing session before I go. I work an 8 hour day and only pump once during the day (yeah, i have some oversupply issues...). If i only get out 9 sometimes I pump first thing when I get home, which makes DD pretty annoyed.

[dsaucone]

I used to get 12 at work, plus the 5 - 6 I pumped before work. So 18 a day.

Now I get 6 (if I'm lucky) at work. And 1-4 (depending on when he last woke) before. So 7-11 a day.

One side of my pump broke and we don't really have money to replace it. We're at 7 months and counting. We haven't had to supplement. I'm too stubborn about that. But boy do I despise pumping. :

[Ellien C]

My best advice is to NOT look and NOT know how much you are pumping.

Things got a bit better for me when I did that and when she started to have some solids. I just decided that I wasn't going to measure my self-worth by what was going into those little bottles. It was obsessive and and half and ounce was starting to make the difference in how I felt about myself and how successful I was at my job.

I just tried to trust that over 24 hours the baby would get what she needed. And if I couldn't manage to pump it than she would get it through cluster feedings and reverse-cycling. And that must have been what happened because she was always fine developmentally and her weight was always normal. Really, it's going to be OK. The baby will get what she needs as long as she has access to your breasts through some part of the day.

[aran]

Originally Posted by Ellien C

My best advice is to NOT look and NOT know how much you are pumping.

Things got a bit better for me when I did that and when she started to have some solids. I just decided that I wasn't going to measure my self-worth by what was going into those little bottles. It was obsessive and and half and ounce was starting to make the difference in how I felt about myself and how successful I was at my job.

I just tried to trust that over 24 hours the baby would get what she needed. And if I couldn't manage to pump it than she would get it through cluster feedings and reverse-cycling. And that must have been what happened because she was always fine developmentally and her weight was always normal. Really, it's going to be OK. The baby will get what she needs as long as she has access to your breasts through some part of the day.

Yes - totally true for me on all counts, as well.

[secondimpression]

I went back to work at 6 weeks and DS is now 4 months and has never had anything besides my milk :

My supply has been all over the place, I pump anywhere from 7 to 13ozs in a day at work, 9-10 being my average. I usually manage to squeeze in 2 extra pumping sessions at home during the week sometimes giving me an extra 2-3ozs to freeze on Friday.

I only had a week to pump before I went back to work, so never really built up much of a freezer stash. Growth spurts also do serious damage to it, it's scary to look into the freezer and see NO little baggies of milk...with 3 more days of work to go before the weekend. As of this moment, I have 6ozs in our freezer, 2 at the sitter's and another 2 at my mom's. I don't think I've ever had more than 15ozs frozen at any one time.

I hate pumping as much as the next mama and have to take it one week at a time. It feels kind of funny to say that I'm going to practice child-led weaning and breastfeed beyond infancy and at the same time that my goal with pumping is just to make it through the week.

[Phoenix~Mama]

Originally Posted by secondimpression

I hate pumping as much as the next mama and have to take it one week at a time. It feels kind of funny to say that I'm going to practice child-led weaning and breastfeed beyond infancy and at the same time that my goal with pumping is just to make it through the week.

lol I can sooo relate to that statement as it runs through my head a lot. lol When my notice goes off to go pump again I have to pep talk myself, "its for DD, come on, you know you can do it for her." So I tredge to my little file room that me and another woman have turned into a pumping room.

I pump a total of 5 times a day and am still not pumping enough. Stupid AF is mucking things up at the moment. But I did the math of what I have in the freezer, and add in some days off here and there for holiday, etc... I'm pretty confident we will make it a year, and I think after that I won't have to be trying to pump quite as much to cover her needs for the day.

I'd like to BF till at least 2 years... so pump, pump... onward! lol

[Mrsboyko]

I went back to work at 7 weeks PP. Started pumping around 10 oz a day and DS was eating 14-16 oz. I panicked and started pumping for longer stretches right away. Well, once he settled into DC and regualr bottles, his intake dropped ti 8-12 oz, all the while my supply incresed hugely. I now pump about 17-20 oz a day and he takes about 12 oz. I have recently started giving my 2.5 y/o toddler BM again because my freezer is overflowing, as is my moms freezer. I obviously have issues with oversupply on the weekends and often need to pump even when he is with me the while day. Once he starts solids I will attempt to reign it in a bit. Till then I am counting my blessings.

[PiePie]

10 oz. a day was average, but it varied from 6 to 18. i kept reminding myself that a good day would make up for a bad day and that there was a reason i had a stash.

eta: maybe 12 oz. a day was average. it was so important to me not so long ago and now i can't remember!

[jeliphish]

I make too much for her needs. She drinks about 13-15 ounces during the day and I pump about 20 or 25 ounces. My first session is about at 9:30 in the morning and on the side that she didn't eat off much at night and I get about 11 ounces out of that session alone.

[laurac5]

Wow, thanks for all your answers -- been a while since I've been back. I'm still getting 10oz a day and am not concerned that it's too little -- my dd probably has a different appetite from your dc, and she eats a good amount overnight as well. Now she's 11 months, and she continues to do fine. She's tall and skinny but our ped has been good about not panicking about weight. She's active enough that we all know where those calories are going!

I am surprised that my 13oz "oversupply" would be a low or average day for many of you. When I pumped that much I would come home to see two ounces or so sitting out that dd hadn't finished. She would get fussy because of my overactive let-down, she had some signs of foremilk/hindmilk imalance, and she would eat her fill in 5 minutes without needing to change sides.

Even now that I pump 10oz per day, we have only dipped into the freezer stash on days when we forget to refrigerate my milk when I get home. She is eating solids, but she only wants one 4oz jar (except for during growth spurts). Gets a bite of Daddy's banana in the morning, and a handful of Cheerio's or puffed millet to feed herself while we eat our meals, but not enough to fill up on.

All that to say, I am convinced that for my dd 10oz is plenty. Just goes to show that all of or little ones are different. :-)

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

I was doing about 20 ounces a day in the very begining (7 weeks PP) then it leveled off to about 12-14. Recently its around 9, and thats after three pumpings in an 8 hours shift. When he started getting mobile, around 8 months, that just wasnt enough. Even with the jarred food. I started adding a little bit of formula to his bottles that i sent to the DCP. within a day they noticed a different baby, and so did I at home. Wasnt nearly as fussy, happy, even more energy. I felt bad about the supplimenting at first, but when I saw how happy he was, it made me feel better.

[mrscookie]

I'm surprised by how much milk your babes are drinking while you're gone. I'm gone all day long and L (almost 1 year) will drink usually about 4 ounces while I'm gone for 10 hours or so, sometimes as much as 6 or 7 ounces. But when he sees me come home, he's ready to rip my shirt off. I pump 7 or 8 ounces per day if I pump once, but I think I should be more diligent and pump more often to protect my milk supply. It's been definitely decreasing. Been back to work since L was 8 months. He struggled with taking a bottle a lot even though we tried to introduce that from when he was 4-6 weeks (knowing that I would have to go back to work and based on advice from the ped, not sure I would stress so much about it next time, since stressing about it early with L didn't really help). He finally started drinking way more milk when he learned how to drink of those sippy cups with the straws built in.

[DangerMom]

I pump about what my son takes in while I'm gone. Occasionally we'll have to get a bag out of the freezer stash, but it's pretty rare. He mainly nurses overnight while we're sleeping.

I went back to work when he was 8 weeks, and I pumped three times a day for several months. I averaged 9-12 ounces, depending on how much sleep I had gotten the night before. The sleep really made a difference!

For the last few months I've been pumping twice a day at work, and I average... 9-12 ounces, yet again. My son is 8 months old.