New Exclusive Pumping Tribe! - Page 2

[MadelinesMama]

I just leave our bottles in the fridge and throw one in the warmer.  Are you trying to avoid going to the kitchen for night feeds? 

I have never used the Tommy Tippee warmer.  We use this Munchkin one.  It was pretty cheap and warms up really fast.  We use glass bottles though, so it only takes about 20 seconds for the milk to get warm. 

If you are wanting to avoid getting up and warming up bottles how about filling a bottle with water  before you go to bed and then just adding the formula powder when she wakes up?   I would much rather waste formula than breastmilk. 
 

[HappyHappyMommy]

Originally Posted by Jessimaca 

Breastfeeding was a HUGE deal to me.  Having a nursing relationship was the number 1 thing I hoped for--

Jessimaca, I don't work with other moms/babies on breastfeeding, but I really related with the emotions in your post. Breastfeeding was so important to me and I definitely grieved the loss of what I expected I would have.

Originally Posted by clairebear3 

So how does everyone handle the logistics of pumping and storing milk?  I ended up throwing away 80ml of milk which is awful when i'm already supplementing!

clairebear3, I remember spilling some milk and bursting into tears and my DP said "it's ok, I'll clean it up" and I remember snapping back and saying "You don't understand how hard I'm working for this and then to have to lose it and throw it away is SO frustrating!" to you.

After I pumped, I immediately put the milk in the fridge or in a cooler. We set up a queue of milk bottles in the fridge. The queue was on the top shelf. The front of the queue was at the right side of the fridge, at the front of the fridge. The queue went backwards to the back of the fridge and then partway along the back of the fridge. When I would pump, I put the milk at the back of the queue and when our daughter was hungry, we'd take the milk from the front of the queue. Having this worked really well for us because we always knew which was the newer milk and which was the older milk. The only things was that about once a day, we'd have to scoot the bottles up; we joked that it would be helpful to have a little conveyor belt in the fridge!

At first, I marked one bottle to see how quickly it took us to get to it and found that I was getting to things within 4 days, so I knew it was all fine. I was lucky, at times, to pump more than my daughter was eating, so if I noticed the queue was getting a bit long, then I would freeze the milk at my next pump.

We never fed our daughter milk at fridge temperature, we always heated it up. We had a bottle warmer that was great, but sadly is no longer produced (I think because it didn't get things very hot...of course I thought that was a bonus!). However, if we were away from home, we just heated the bottle in warm water. I first did that when I was visiting my mom and we used a bowl and filled it with hot tap water and stuck the bottle in that. My DP then got the idea of a travel mug. We found one that we already had, which was wider in width then the bottle, but also fit in the end pouch of our diaper bag and just took that everywhere. If we were at someone's house, we could fill it with warm tap water. And at restaurants or out doing errands, we never had a problem when we asked for warm water in the travel mug, if we explained it was to heat our daughter's milk.

If you have more questions about storing or heating, just ask; I can go on and on about this stuff.

Also, I found a post I wrote a while back with some thoughts on EPing and I wanted to link to it in case it's helpful to anyone: http://www.mothering.com/community/t/1129895/ep-tips-and-tricks#post_14331576

[clairebear3]

I would love to have enough milk to form a queue!

Just wondering if anyone has used the 'freemie' system?  It looked really interesting but I just googled it and according to the Ameda site it's not compatible with my pump, rats!  I though it would be an easy way to squeeze another session in.  Wonder why it wouldn't work?

I just found out that 3 months is the cut-off point for establishing supply, wish i'd known that before
 

[MadelinesMama]

I've never heard of the Freemie before, but I googled it.  It looks like a neat idea.  However it does say you aren't able to do breast massage while pumping, so that's pretty much out for me. 

[Jessimaca]

HappyMommy~  Thanks for your understanding.  Yes, it's been a long grieving process that I'm still in the midst of.  I just have started to accept that I may be doing this for a year-- that she may never get it   I will continue with the exclusive pumping for hopefully 1 year-- that's my goal anyway.  I will continue to try and latch her here and there because the hope of her latching someday keeps me motivated to pump.  This all actually makes me leary about having more children.  I don't know...  It also makes me question my goal of becoming an IBCLC.  It's something I will continue to think about.  I question it being too painful helping others to suceed.  But, at the same time this process has just reiterated to me how important the nursing relationship is-- how much it means and how difficult it can be physically, emotionally, mentally.  So, we will see.

Claire~ I do a very similar as HappyMommy.  I have a queue that I rotate in the fridge and I freeze leftovers.  I am reading a very helpful book called Exclusively Pumping Breast Milk by Stephanie Casemore that I really suggest tracking down.  It really goes over the nuts and bolts and great suggestions for upping supply and problem solving.  

An update on me~  I'm hanging in there I guess.  I have real ups and downs.  I cry sometimes and sometimes I think "okay, I can do this.  This is a short time in my daughters life and I'm happy that I'm at least provding BM."  I don't know, I'm all over the map.  I just cut out 1 pumping (that book above helped me to figure it out).  So, I am at 8 pumpings now and I will see how that affects my supply.  It says in this book that you may start experimenting with cutting down pumping at 3 months and beyond. And that most successful EPers pump about 120 minutes per day now matter how many pumpings they do.  So, that's 8 pumpings at 15 minutes a session.  So, I'll let you know how it goes.  It says not to cut out more than 1 month if your trying to make it a long way. 

[HappyHappyMommy]

Originally Posted by clairebear3 
I just found out that 3 months is the cut-off point for establishing supply, wish i'd known that before

clairebear, I kept track of how much I was pumping for several months and I still have the information someplace; I'll try to find in the next few days, but I am pretty sure that my supply increased later than 3 months. I had sort of a love/hate relationship with what I read because it was helpful to read and get more information, but so much stuff that I found was written with these negative definitive statements that were discouraging to me. Perhaps 3 months is the average for establishing supply? If so, perhaps your supply will increase after three months? After, EP mamas are not average...we are awesome in many ways! Sending support your way!

Originally Posted by Jessimaca 

HappyMommy~  Thanks for your understanding.  Yes, it's been a long grieving process that I'm still in the midst of.  I just have started to accept that I may be doing this for a year-- that she may never get it   I will continue with the exclusive pumping for hopefully 1 year-- that's my goal anyway.  I will continue to try and latch her here and there because the hope of her latching someday keeps me motivated to pump.  This all actually makes me leary about having more children.  I don't know...  It also makes me question my goal of becoming an IBCLC.  It's something I will continue to think about.  I question it being too painful helping others to suceed.  But, at the same time this process has just reiterated to me how important the nursing relationship is-- how much it means and how difficult it can be physically, emotionally, mentally.  So, we will see.

...

An update on me~  I'm hanging in there I guess.  I have real ups and downs.  I cry sometimes and sometimes I think "okay, I can do this.  This is a short time in my daughters life and I'm happy that I'm at least provding BM."  I don't know, I'm all over the map.  I just cut out 1 pumping (that book above helped me to figure it out).  So, I am at 8 pumpings now and I will see how that affects my supply.  It says in this book that you may start experimenting with cutting down pumping at 3 months and beyond. And that most successful EPers pump about 120 minutes per day now matter how many pumpings they do.  So, that's 8 pumpings at 15 minutes a session.  So, I'll let you know how it goes.  It says not to cut out more than 1 month if your trying to make it a long way. 

Jessimaca. Remember that you don't have to make any decisions about the size of your family or your career goals now. And when you need support, we are here for you. Keep us posted on how things are going as you start experimenting with your pumping schedule and length.

And to all the mamas on this thread, I have a non-pumping question. What fun and cute things are your babies doing at the moment? I remember in the early months of EPing, so much of what I was reading and talking about and being asked questions about was pumping and I wanted a break sometimes to just tell people the cool things that my baby was doing; it so neat when they smile and giggle and reach for things and try to roll over and so much more. So I'd be delighted to hear about what your babies are doing!

[clairebear3]

It is so true that EPing can be all consuming!  I'm really trying just to pump at the moment and not trawl around 100 sites a day looking for tips and tricks and so forth, it was driving me crazy.  I'm really trying to get into other things just to get my mind of it.  I went to a lesson in baby massage, read the No Cry Sleep Solution and now i'm thinking of trying CDing.  I've also realised just how important it is to get out of the house!  It takes me an hour to change, feed and pump and then repeat after two hours, if I stay in the house all day I start to go stir crazy so I really make the effort to go for a walk or see a friend of something and it really helps.

Re my supply I think my milk wasn't really fully 'in' when things went wrong for us and I prob didn't start pumping soon/often enough.  I still only get about 600-700 a day.  I'm taking 90mg dom, Mothers milk tea, fenugreek tincture, more milk plus tincture and goats rue tincture.  I started taking 8ml fenugreek tincture a day but I still don't smell like maple syrup so I think i'm going to try some capsules to see if that helps, i'm not sure what the dosage should be though, I don't think there's much more I can do.

Jessi I feel just the same, I have good days where my DD is really content and I can just get on and pump and get some things done but then there are times when I just dread getting on the pump.  Or like last week it was really hot and DD wouldn't sleep during the day and I get stressed if I couldn't get her settled to pump.  That evening I had a really hard time, I try to focus so hard on the positives but it's hard sometimes.

Happyhappymommy I really hope that there's still hope for my supply!   I have given up on breastfeeding but I would be able to stick at this much longer if I didn't have to supp.  My DD had a crazy week, not sleeping much during the day, then today sleeping a lot, she normally takes her 'night' feed at 6am but today it was 3.30!  Not sure if it's down to a growth spurt or not but she also learnt 3 new things in one day!  Yesterday she reached and grabbed for a toy hanging above her, held her hands together and rolled onto her side!  It was so strange, like someone flicked a switch and she could suddenly do all these new things :)  I don't think she'll be rolling over fully yet because she HATES tummy time...
 

[HappyHappyMommy]

Originally Posted by clairebear3 
Happyhappymommy I really hope that there's still hope for my supply!   I have given up on breastfeeding but I would be able to stick at this much longer if I didn't have to supp.  My DD had a crazy week, not sleeping much during the day, then today sleeping a lot, she normally takes her 'night' feed at 6am but today it was 3.30!  Not sure if it's down to a growth spurt or not but she also learnt 3 new things in one day!  Yesterday she reached and grabbed for a toy hanging above her, held her hands together and rolled onto her side!  It was so strange, like someone flicked a switch and she could suddenly do all these new things :)  I don't think she'll be rolling over fully yet because she HATES tummy time...

I am hoping there's still hope for your supply too and sending lots of good supply thoughts your way. That's so cool that your daughter did so many new things yesterday.

[clairebear3]

Thank you!

Today is a bad day :(

My LO does not nap unless she's on me, she's too small for the Beco and I have a rough time with the Moby.  I have to clean, iron, shop, shower and pack for vacation on Thurs.  MIL will also be visiting, it's just times like this that EPing is so hard.  LO has kind of started grumbling constantly if not being held/sometimes even if being held.  I really need some kind of schedule, nap and otherwise.  Pff in some ways I know I will be sad and cry the last time my breasts will be full of milk for my babe but I will be so happy to stop EPing!
 

[MadelinesMama]

Hi all!

We just got back from a weekend at the lake with friends.  It was the first time we have gotten away in the 9 months since Finley was born.  Due to being on a boat much of the weekend I was only able to pump 4 or 5 times a day on Saturday and Sunday.  On the one hand I'm always worried when I don't get all my pumpings in that it will negatively impact my supply.  But boy was it nice to not be obsessed with pumping.  4 times a day felt like I was living life and not planning life around my pumping schedule.  I'm back to my 7 time a day schedule today. It was nice while it lasted!

[JudiAU]

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone but I wanted to add that my cousin EPed for four months with a non-latching baby. She worked with an LC over this period and kept trying to latch. At four months, he latched well and they never went back to bottles at all. Not once! He nursed until he was 3.

[HappyHappyMommy]

Originally Posted by clairebear3 
Today is a bad day :(

How are you doing today?

[Jessimaca]

Madeline~ I am so impressed that you've made it 9 months aleady!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I can't imagine getting to that point.  I'm hoping to make it a year, but who knows?  EPing is so hard :-(

Judi~  I love hearing stories like that!  It gives me hope that I will be out of this craziness someday.  Those are the stories that keep me going-- keeps me motivated to keep my supply up in the hopes that my DD will latch someday!

Hope everyone is well and hope your having a better day Claire.  Things are ok here.  Again, I just take it day by day.  I am trying to accept where we are (EPing) while keeping hope up for latching in the future.  It's a hard place to be.  I think I attempt to latch her every other day or so now.  What about everyone else?  How are you doing?  How often do you attempt latching?

[anj_rn]

I just wanted to drop in and tell all of you how awesome you are.  I BF DS for 13mos, and planned to do baby lead weaning with DD.  She suffered a brain injury at 4 mos old, and so I EBFed for the first 4 month and then EPed for the next 21 months.  I just want to say it can be done.  There were times when I was overwhelmed, and when i felt like I had a more amorous relationship with my pump than my DH, but I set deadlines for my self.  I am going to pump until Christmas, until DDs birthday, etc etc.  When the day got closer, I knew I was not ready to stop, until finally I felt done.  Every day you pump is miraculous, so count every one of them as a good day.

Much love to you all.

[Jessimaca]

Anj_rn~  You are amazing  and inspiring!

[MadelinesMama]

Originally Posted by Jessimaca 

Madeline~ I am so impressed that you've made it 9 months aleady!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I can't imagine getting to that point.  I'm hoping to make it a year, but who knows?  EPing is so hard :-(

Judi~  I love hearing stories like that!  It gives me hope that I will be out of this craziness someday.  Those are the stories that keep me going-- keeps me motivated to keep my supply up in the hopes that my DD will latch someday!

Hope everyone is well and hope your having a better day Claire.  Things are ok here.  Again, I just take it day by day.  I am trying to accept where we are (EPing) while keeping hope up for latching in the future.  It's a hard place to be.  I think I attempt to latch her every other day or so now.  What about everyone else?  How are you doing?  How often do you attempt latching?

Thank you!  It is very hard.  It certainly gets old.  My son was born at 27 weeks so my goal is to make it through next flu/rsv season.  Soo.. 9 more months.  I'm half way done!!! 

[Jessimaca]

I was just contemplating today, in my exhaustion, that if my baby were nursing I would be getting a good 6-7 hours of sleep a night.  And I would have so much more time during the day.  And my DD would be a lot less fussy :-(  So sad....

[HappyHappyMommy]

Originally Posted by Jessimaca 

Anj_rn~  You are amazing  and inspiring!

Originally Posted by MadelinesMama 
Thank you!  It is very hard.  It certainly gets old.  My son was born at 27 weeks so my goal is to make it through next flu/rsv season.  Soo.. 9 more months.  I'm half way done!!! 

Congratulations on being halfway done MadelinesMama!

Originally Posted by Jessimaca 

I was just contemplating today, in my exhaustion, that if my baby were nursing I would be getting a good 6-7 hours of sleep a night.  And I would have so much more time during the day.  And my DD would be a lot less fussy :-(  So sad....

Jessimaca. A few thoughts: how many hours are you sleeping in a stretch? I was able to get to a place where I had only one pumping during my usual sleep time and I could do a longish stretch on one side of the pumping and a shortish side of pumping on the other side; I pumped when I got up to feed my DD so that helped with the interrupted sleep. Are you able to do things while you pump? Even checking email or something helped me feel like I wasn't losing time to pumping. Thinking of you and sending support!

[Jessimaca]

I do check email and stuff when I can.  Usually I'm trying to entertain a crying baby :-(

It's just so hard.  I start thinking about things could be and I get so mad and frustrated and depressed about it.  Not only do I have all the stress of EPing (less sleep, freedom, all the benefits of nursing being lost)-- I also have this really hard, needy baby.  Who doesn't really nap much during the day and seems to cry as soon as I start pumping which is REALLY stressful.  I know she would be a happier baby if I could nurse her whenever she needed.  It's just not like that with bottlefeeding.  It's SO hard.  It's like I can't provide what she really needs and as a result she is so fussy.  And now she is teething on top of it.  I've had to give tylenol almost every day lately.

[MadelinesMama]

Jessimaca-- It sounds like you are having a really rough time!!  I don't have any awesome words of advice, but hang in there.  It won't be like this forever.