Tips - use a timer to keep on track

In the early days, when you are in the depths of sleep deprivation and awake around the clock, it can be hard to keep on top of a pumping schedule or remember when you pumped last or should pump next.

One way to make it easier, is to get a cheap battery powered kitchen timer for your pump bag, something like this:



When you pump, you can use it to time your session - i.e. if you will be pumping for 15 minutes, set and start it when you begin pumping, and then you have one less thing to keep track of when you are already juggling pumping + entertaining baby + telephone ringing, etc.

Later on I continued to use the timer method when I was pumping at work or on my own. I found that when I was able to zone out and watch TV, read a book, or otherwise NOT focus on how much milk was adding up, I tended to get much better production than when I was stressing about it. Also, sometimes when I was nice and relaxed on my lunch hour, I'd forget when I had started if not for the timer going off :)

When you finish, you can set the timer for the remaining interval until you need to pump again - i.e. 2 hours and 45 minutes, and toss it back in your pump bag. When it goes off, you'll know it's time to hook up again, even if you can't remember what you did 5 minutes ago, let alone 3 hours :) Especially in this day and age when clocks and watches are disappearing, a timer can be VERY helpful!

What pumping tips do you have to share?

Kristen, Ethan, & Lilly - an Introduction

Hi, my name is Kristen. I am mom to Ethan (3yrs) & Lilly (6 months). I am 33 yrs old and my one and only dream in life was to be a mom. At 20 I was diagnosed with Poly Cycstic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Basically my body does not always produce enough of the hormone to tell my body to release my eggs, so the eggs start to mature but don't get released; they stay in the ovaries and form cysts. For many reasons this makes it difficult to get pregnant.

When I got married we tried for 2.5 yrs to get pregnant and even went to a fertility specialist. The specialist immediately wanted to try intrauterine insemination. The success rate was not extremely high & it was going to cost a lot, so we decided to get a second opinion. My OB at the time would not refer us to any one else, so I got a new OB. I lucked out that the new OB was a fertility specialist (I didn't know that when I picked him, I had just heard wonderful things about his practice). He did not agree with the other specialist because he felt the doctor hadn't done his due diligence and performed certain tests to rule out other issues. So he did a gamut of tests, the last one being an HCG test, which is VERY painful. They shoot dye into your uterine cavity and watch it on a screen to see where it goes. Mine showed that my tubes were 98% and 99% blocked. This meant that the very expensive procedure the first doctor had wanted to do had no chance of ever working. I was told that if we wanted to get pregnant we would need IVF. So we went back to everyday life and started saving up money. One year later I wasn't feeling well, went to doctor, and found out I was 17 weeks pregnant with my son! Completely natural conception.

When he was born he was EXTREMELY jaundiced (almost life threatening) so we had to supplement early on. We did not get good advice or support from the hospital and ended up not being able to BF at all (at the time I did not know I could just pump and serve).

When I got pregnant with my daughter (again naturally) I was hellbent on nursing. Well, the doctor messed up my due date and she was born almost 5 weeks early (planned c-section due to emergency c-section with my son). No real complications but she was tiny and I have large nipples so there was a fitting issue, plus due to my PCOS my milk WAS VERY SLOW to come in. She was also jaundice, so we supplemented but had great advice this time and finger/syringe fed her. We tried for 3 1/2 months to BF but we couldn't get it to work. She was a lazy nurser. I had a terribly slow let down. At first it took over an hour to let down and get to the hind milk. My milk came in day 10 -14, by 3 weeks old we had stopped supplementing and everything was BM. I syringe fed her for 7 weeks.

Here is what a feeding consisted of:
Nurse 20 - 25 minutes, while pumping the other side. Then switch for another 20 minutes.

Finish pumping both side (double pumping). She had gotten enough milk to keep her happy while I finished, then syringe feed her. This took about 30 minutes or so.

Do it all over 2 hrs later.

This took a toll on my 3 yr old and me. I felt like I was constantly feeding/pumping, it consumed almost my whole day. I felt my relationship with my son was suffering.

I saw a lactation consultant once a week for 3 months and did before/after weights. We found that Lilly was only getting .5 to 1 oz per feeding. Finally I resigned myself to the fact that physical breast feeding was not in the cards for us. But that didn't mean she couldn't get breast milk. The way I look at it is, I'm still breast feeding just the delivery method is unconventional.

So now I eat oatmeal with flax seed mixed in (helps with letdown)everyday, drink tons of water, drink the nursing tea, and take More Milk Special Blend supplements. When I pump I rest a heating pad on my chest. I now get letdown in about 35 minutes and it only take about 45 minutes to pump. I get 6-8oz every time and have about 100 oz stashed. (I had almost 200 but had to break into it when my supply dropped when I switched from More Milk to fenugreek). I pump 5 -6 times a day (the 6th is hard to get in but I manage maybe 3 times a week, if lucky). Lilly is thriving. She started out off the charts (less than 1%) and is now up to 25 -50% for height and 10-20% for weight.

My original goal was a year but I would like to go 14 -16 months and then be able to have a stash for another couple months.

Lilly does nurse before bed or when she isn't feeling well but this is almost totally for comfort. But it is proven that your body can get biophysical readings from the saliva in her mouth when she latches, it adjust the milk, so I try to nurse her at least once a week or so to try to get her the best nutrition possible

Although this has been very hard and not exactly how I envisioned it, I couldn't imagine NOT doing this for her. I only wish I could have done this for my son. Exclusively Pumping is most definitely a labor of love and I greatly admire all moms who take this on. Thanks for letting me share my story!

Kylee & M - An Introduction

Why do I exclusively pump?

My entire pregnancy I constantly worried about whether I would be able to produce milk to feed my baby. Two years prior to getting pregnant I had decided to get breast implants. I knew that decision would have an impact on my breastfeeding abilities. When I went in for surgery they placed my implants under the muscle and they said they did not touch any milk ducts. I was told that the implants should not effect my ability to breastfeed. WRONG - (well somewhat). The doctor was right in that fact that it did not effect my milk supply at all. However, nobody told me that you would have heightened sensitivity or loss of sensitivity - and I had both. On my left breast I only have about 70% feeling and what I can feel is more like pins and needles. On my right breast I had extreme sensitivity. Those two factors I was fully aware of when I was making my decision that I still wanted to breastfeed. Prior to being pregnant I had heard women talk about EPing, it sounded appealing to me since I wanted to give my son breastmilk, but I didn't have a strong desire to actually nurse him. Once my son was born we started off rough, he wasn't latching well and when he did he would fall asleep within 2 minutes. M's blood sugar was also low so they had to supplement him with formula to try and get it back up. He also had dropped from 8 lbs. 3 oz to 7 lbs 2 oz within the first day. Since M was receiving formula and not nursing as often as a normal baby I was worried that my milk wouldn't come in, so I went against all I was told and starting pumping. Seeing how much milk I was producing and knowing exactly how much I was giving M was VERY reassuring and allowed for M to stop having to supplement with formula. This is when I made the decision that I wanted to exclusively pump.

Easy, right?

I had heard so many people say that breastfeeding was not easy, well I thought I'm NOT breastfeeding, I'm pumping so it will be much easier. I don't have to worry about latch issues, sore nipples, and I'll know exactly how much M is getting. Let me say it was NOT easy. Once I realized that I was pretty much "double-dutying" it I wondered if I made the right decision. I never had an issue with supply, so I could feed M and then pump after. For the first month I felt like my life was the exact same thing every day - feed M, rock him to sleep, pump, try and get myself some sleep. That rotation was based on 3 hour increments, so by the time I was done with everything and trying to take a nap I only had 30-45 minutes left before the whole thing started again. What about when I needed to eat, shower, do laundry? Those things were pretty done only out of the complete necessity. If my stomach wasn't growling I would skip my meal so I could sleep, if my hair didn't look greasy or I couldn't smell myself then my shower was pushed aside, if I still had clean underwear then I definitely wasn't doing laundry. Life behind my pumping horns was WAY more difficult than I had planned. I had issues with engorgement, clogged ducts, and mastitis. I feel like a great deal of these issues were caused by my lack of knowledge about pumping or just breastmilk in general.

Here are things I wish someone would have told me:

* It's not easy, but it DOES get easier

* At times you will completely despise your pump, other times you will feel so proud of what you have accomplished.

* Don't skip reading materials about breastfeeding, a lot of the information will still apply to you

* Watch a video or read about hand expression, you will get more milk out if you do this while you are pumping

* If you have a clogged duct, wet a washcloth, put it in a ziplock bag (not closed) and in the microwave for 30 seconds. This will create a heating pad that you should put on your breasts for 10 minutes before you pump and then reheat to put on while you pump. Massage the spot while you pump. It may take more than one pumping session to get the clog out - do not go more than 4 hours between sessions during this time.

* If you get chills, achy body, fever while you have a clog - call your doc asap, this may mean mastitis.

* Instead of buying a hands free bra, make your own with a sports bra. Actually I just wore whatever bra and would pull my shirt down instead of up and once I got pumping there was enough suction to hold the horns on - as long as I wasn't moving too much.

* Get yourself a small jug to put milk in that your baby will be eating right away. If you put everything right in bags you will be wasting too many. Fill your jug first, and then freeze any extra.

* Get yourself a inverter for your car. You can save yourself a lot of time by pumping while driving/riding.

* When you first get started don't try to get on a schedule, pump before/after each feeding. It's a lot easier to just stay on the same pattern as your baby. Pumping at certain times a day in the beginning was not practical for me.

* Set small goals for yourself. 3 months, 6 months, etc.

* Always bring your pump if you plan on being gone for more than an hour. That way if plans change you are prepared.

4 Month Stats

I have now made it to 4 months. Wooooohoooo!!!!

* I have spent 224 hours pumping

* I have pump an estimated 6100 ounces

* I currently have 2000 ounces in my freezer ( 2 month supply)

Pumping Challenges: Excess Lipase - Rachel

About 2 weeks before my daughter started daycare I decided to give her a bottle from my frozen stash. I wanted to make sure she would take it in case the taste had changed slightly in the freezing process. When I defrostedthe first bag, I noticed an overwhelming smell of metal. I thought perhaps it was just something wrong with that bag, so I thawed another bag. Same thing. I became terrified that my 400 oz stash of frozen milk was bad. Without any knowledge of what was causing this, I consulted my friend Dr Google. I was led to multiple message boards with moms stating their frozen milk smelled metallic or soapy. After reading multiple forums and doing some real research, I discovered I had an excess lipase issue.

What I learned:

- Lipase is an enzyme that helps to break down the fats in milk. In moms with excess lipase, the lipase begins breaking down the fats soon after expression, altering the taste and smell of the milk.

- There is nothing you can do to change the amount of lipase in your milk.

- Although it smells terrible, it is not harmful to the baby. As long as the baby is still willing to drink it, it is safe to give. (Some babies reject the milk due to the altered taste.)

- There is nothing you can do to milk that has already been frozen. However, after expressing milk, it can be scalded before freezing to slow the breakdown of fats.

- If your baby will not take the frozen milk, milk banks will still accept it.

I filled Hannah's bottle with the icky milk and prayed she would take it. She gave me a disapproving look at first and then gulped down the bottle as usual. I breathed a huge sigh of relief with the realization that I would not have to get rid of my large stash. I spoke with my pediatrician and a lactation consult about scalding my milk in the future. The consensus was that you should not scald if the baby is willing to drink it as is. Exposing milk to heat of any kind can decrease its nutritional value. However, for those that must scald, it is still better than formula.

Excess lipase is not a very common problem, but it is not as rare as I thought either. For anyone building a frozen stash, please check your milk! I am lucky that my daughter is willing to drink it, but I have come across others that had to give up their entire freezer stash.

Schedule & Equipment - Janna

I have been exclusively pumping (EPing) since my daughter was 3 days old. You can read about how I came to that decision in my first post here. For the first three months I tried to pump at least 8-10 times per day. I didn’t worry about the spacing as much as making sure that I got the correct number of pumps in per day. I tried to space them as evenly as possible and not go more than 4 hours between pumps. I ended up dropping the middle of the night pump when my daughter was just over a month old because I just couldn’t do it anymore. I would stay up really late and pump around 11pm and wake up about 6am to pump. I would usually be really uncomfortable and engorged, but I felt like I needed this extra sleep to function as I was continuing to feed my daughter throughout the night as well. As long as I continued to maintain 8 pumps per day, I didn’t see any decrease in my milk output. When my daughter was just over two months old I started experimenting with dropping pumps. My goal was to get down to 4 pumps per day by the time I returned to work, so I needed to taper. I basically just dropped 1 pump per day each week and re-spaced my pumps as evenly as possible throughout the day. I was finally beginning to feel like exclusive pumping would be possible long term and amazingly, I did not experience any drop in my milk supply as I dropped pumps. In fact, my supply increased when I returned to work when my daughter was 3 months old!

When I initially started pumping at home I used a Madela Symphony to build my supply. From what I have read, a hospital pump is absolutely essential to building your milk supply if your baby is not nursing. When I first started pumping I was not making a lot of milk (about 12-16 ounces per day). I had to work really hard to build my supply. I found the most useful techniques were to pump for at least 30 minutes (if you baby is not nursing at all), using heat packs, and breast massage. Also a hands free bra is absolutely essential! Once I made these changes to my pumping regimen, I saw a drastic increase in the amount of milk I was able to pump. I bought a Madela Freestyle so that I could pump on the go (in the car!) and to use when I returned to work. The portable pump allowed me a lot of freedom that I didn’t have with the hospital pump.

On the days that I work, I pump at 5am, 10am and 3pm at work, and right before I go to bed (usually about 10pm). I like to sleep in on the weekends (if my daughter will let me!), so my first pump is usually about 7:30 am and then I pump again around 12pm, 5pm, and before bed. I started out with 30 minute pumping sessions, but recently I have gone down to 20-25 minutes. I did see a slight drop in my milk supply, but I’m still making plenty to meet my daughter’s needs. I also developed mastitis about 2 weeks ago which may have contributed to the decrease in my supply as well. As a side note, mastitis is extremely painful and takes quite a while to recover from. Take good care of your nipples if you are EPing! I had not been using lanolin on a regular basis and developed sores and cracks which I think may have been the cause of my mastitis. I now put lanolin on my nipples before I pump to help reduce the friction. I have heard that some moms use olive oil and that works well too.

If you aren’t able to pump enough milk to meet your baby’s needs, she is still going to benefit greatly from whatever amount you can provide. Feel good about what you are able to accomplish and try not to compare yourself to other moms. Take EPing as far as you want to go and try not to feel guilty if/when you decide to give it up. EPing is a lot of work and is a huge time commitment. Please know that you’re not alone. There are a lot of moms who end up in this same situation and choose to pump exclusively. It is one of the many options to feed your baby. If you can make it through the first 3 months it truly does get easier!!

Here are some of my favorite internet resources that I found to be instrumental to my pumping success.

http://newborns.stanford.edu/Breastfeeding/MaxProduction.html

http://newborns.stanford.edu/Breastfeeding/HandExpression.html

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/supply/maintainsupply-pump.html

http://www.mother-2-mother.com/ExclusivePumping.htm

Janna - an Introduction

I always knew that I would breastfeed my children. It was the one thing that I was absolutely certain about motherhood. However, my certainty faltered when my daughter was born in February of 2011.

In order to maximize my chances for breastfeeding success, I chose to deliver naturally at a birth center. I took a breastfeeding class, read breastfeeding books, and watched breastfeeding videos. My daughter was immediately placed on my chest after she was born and put to my breast. We were able to snuggle without interruption for her first hour of life, but after the first hour she still had not latched. Unfortunately, I suffered a third degree tear during childbirth that required medical attention. At only two hours old, we packed my daughter up in the car and drove to the hospital. When we were finally able to attempt breastfeeding again, my daughter was too sleepy to rouse. We opted to go home the morning that she was born. In retrospect, we should have stayed at the hospital and maybe we could have benefited from some lactation support, but at the time I didn’t know that anything was wrong.

No amount of reading could have prepared me for the challenges we were about to face over the next several weeks. After we arrived home from the hospital we continued to attempt to breastfeed without success. I immediately called a lactation consultant to come to our home to assist us. She was able to get our daughter to latch, but not well. Each time the lactation consultant tried to get her to latch, she would force my daughter onto my breast. We continued to attempt breastfeeding with little to no success. I was able to hand express some colostrom to feed her while we continued to work on breastfeeding. On my daughters 3^rd day of life, we knew that things were going terribly wrong. She had been screaming all night because she was hungry and unable to latch to my breast. We had tried every hour throughout the night and in the morning she was so upset there was no way that we were going to be able to get her to latch. She was jaundiced and had stopped having stools. Her urine frequency had decreased and there were uric acid crystals in her diaper. We were scared. My husband was minutes away from running out the door to buy formula. I called the lactation support services at the hospital and they sent me a Madela Symphony pump out that afternoon. We also called the lactation consultant we had been working with so that she could come to our house to help our daughter latch and show me how to use the pump.

Having no success with latching that afternoon, I started pumping and feeding my daughter expressed milk. At first we tried using the SNS with a nipple shield, but it was way too cumbersome to keep up long term; we only used the SNS for about a week. Additionally, she wasn’t latching all that well to the nipple shield, just to the tip, so we didn’t feel this system was getting us any closer to breastfeeding. We tried finger feeding for a while, but there is only so long you can keep up with the circus of breastfeeding devices before giving up and switching to a bottle. By this point, with all the interventions we had tried, my daughter had developed a severe breast aversion. At one point I couldn’t even take my top off around her because if she saw my breast she would start screaming. Any time I would put her near my breast she would scream. I was heartbroken. I felt like a failure. All I wanted to do was to feed my baby in the most natural way possible and I felt like she was rejecting me. It was really hard not to take the breast refusal personally. I spent a lot of time crying while pumping.

Over the course of our breastfeeding struggles, we saw a total of 4 lactation consultants and a physical therapist (for craniosacral therapy). Even though we had a lot of professional assistance and personal determination we were unable to get breastfeeding to work. I decided that in order to provide my daughter with the best nutrition possible I needed to focus on pumping. When I gave up on nursing, I actually started making more milk. At first I was really ashamed and embarrassed. I was very self conscious about bottle feeding my daughter in public. I also felt very isolated because I would pump alone in the nursery. I felt very disconnected; I was spending 4-5 hours per day pumping away from my daughter. I felt like I was missing out on a lot of opportunities to bond with her. I was lucky to have a huge amount of support from my husband and family. Without their encouragement I don’t think that I could have continued.

It's Membrane Monday!

If you haven't done so recently, make sure to switch out your breast shield membranes! You should do this about every 3 months or whenever you notice a decrease in suction.

Ixelle's Milk donation experience

I recently donated some milk to MothersMilk Bank, mainly because we don't have a chest freezer and our freezer just couldn't store all the milk I was freezing. As I said in an earlier post, I don't rotate my freezer stash because I want Thumper to get the freshest milk I can give him. Here's a few thoughts about the process and my donation timeline for anyone interested in donating milk in the future.

*If you think that you may be interested in donating milk in the future, you can go ahead and do all the paperwork and bloodwork without actually comitting to donating. My process took over a month before I actually sent in the milk, and in the meantime my frozen stash took over the freezer to the point where we didn't have enough room for our frozen food and everyone had to get real creative with storing food that needed freezing. If I had to do it over again I would have definitely started the process much sooner, before I was certain that I had enough to donate.

*When choosing a milk bank, make sure you do the research on where the milk is going. There is a company out there called Prolacta Bioscience that turns human milk into a product and sells it for a profit and several so called 'milk banks' sell the milk they recieve to Prolacta. The milk does not actually go to babies in need. When in doubt, donate to any of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America banks (HMBANA).

*Apparently some milk banks have stricter policies on donor milk, things like washing your breasts before each pump session, how soon you have to refrigerate or freeze your milk, how to clean your pump etc.

* The IRS does not allow a deduction for donating any kind of human tissue. However, you can deduct mileage you incur in your volunteer efforts as well as the cost of your breast pump. (from Milk donor FAQs )

*Alternatly you can donate milk directly to a recipient over websites like Human Milk 4 Human Babies, Eats on Feets, Milkshare.org or even try to sell it on sites like Only the Breast. Most moms will want to know about your health and diet and want to see your test results for certain diseases (and rightly so). I did this while waiting for the official donation process, just answering ads instead of posting. However this will not let you claim any expenses as a tax deduction.

my timeline:

May 31: Contacted milkbank.org and was referred to a closer Mothers Milk Bank and subsequently contacted them. Was asked a series of health-related questions.

June 1: Received the medical history forms and consent forms needed to become a donor (each milk bank is different) over email. I had to sign a consent form, fill out all my information and Thumper's information, and answer a lot of health-related questions. I also had to have my OB and Thumper's pedi sign forms saying that, to their knowledge, my milk was suitable for donation and donating wouldn't negatively effect Thumper.

June 7: Dropped off forms for OB and pedi (my OB was on vacation till that day) Found out that they had to mail the forms back to me and that it took about a week for mail to make it out of the mailroom.

June 18: Got the forms in the mail, mailed them to the milk bank.

June 20: Got confirmation from the milk bank that all forms were recieved, and the next step was the blood test. They mailed out the information and forms for me to go in to a lab to get my blood tested

June 23: Got the forms for the blood test.

June 28: Went in to the lab and got my blood drawn. Got a funny look when I said it was for milk donation.

July 5: Got telephone confirmation that my bloodwork was fine and the go-ahead to donate, and requested a cooler to ship my milk in.

July 7: Cooler arrived with the airbill, didn't have time to pack the milk for pick-up that day (it was a Thursday), and they told me not to send out the milk on a Friday because no one would be there to pick it up over the weekend.

July 11: Called FedEx for an afternoon/evening pick-up, asked them to knock on the door to pick up (instead of leaving the cooler outside all afternoon). Totally failed in giving them a rough estimation of how heavy the cooler would be since I hadn't packed it yet (but that wasn't a
problem, more like a lolme). Packed the milk in the cooler with some crumpled newspaper insulation and waited for pick up. Guy came, picked it up.

July 12: Got telephone confirmation that my milk arrived safely and in excellent condition (all still frozen). Yay! I have freezer space again.

Pumping Challenges: Supply - Ixelle

This seems to be something that weighs heavily on every pumping mom's mind. We all live in constant fear of losing our supply.
Sometime around the 5 week mark I freaked out about not losing weight, and started exercising. This apparently was way too early for my body, and between not wanting to eat, stressing about other issues and my exercise regime, my supply dropped to where I wasn't making enough for Thumper, and we had to start burning through the small freezer stash I had built up. Once that happened I had to really start making sure I got enough calories in a day, I started drinking Mothers' Milk Tea, eating oatmeal religiously every day and power pumping when I felt up to it. I basically pumped every 2 hours instead of every 3 hours for a full day. I didn't see results from this until 3-4 days later.
It took about a week and a half but my supply thankfully built back up without needing to supplement with formula (barely). I'm still in the process of finding that balance between diet, exercise and lactating. It's hard when your body isn't really your own.

Fast forward 3 months, I started having to deal with an oversupply. This involved having to get real creative with freezer space and even talking about buying a chest freezer which we couldn't really afford. I didn't want to rotate my freezer stash because I wanted Thumper to get the freshest milk possible for as long as possible, and so even with providing everything he was eating in a day, I was also freezing an extra 16-20 oz. This was when I decided to donate milk (I'll write later about this!) and once again, it was kind of a leap of faith since there are no guarantees about my supply in the future, it would be terrible to have donated milk that I would later need. And yes, even so much extra I was still in constant fear of my supply dropping, especially with people telling me about the unexplained drop in supply that is supposed to happen at 6 months. This was also when I started looking around for information and resources on EPing online to see if I really needed to be worried about my supply dropping at 6 months (I'm at 4+ months now, so maybe in a few months I'll be writing a post about that). After a little research and some personal stories from some awesome fellow pumping moms, I decided to try dropping from pumping every 3 hours to every 4 hours (which went very well) and then dropping one of my pumps altogether, so I would have one 8-hour stretch between pumps every day and would be pumping 5 times in a day. This is where I'm currently at and my body is still adjusting to this new schedule, I may have to tweak this schedule a little. I'm freezing much less milk daily, and have had a few plugged ducts (ouch) that I'm working with, but that is another struggle for another time!

Tips For EPing - AWBeth

I wrote this for a friend when I was EPing with my first DD.

-Number ONE ---- Store your pump parts in a plastic bag in the fridge in between pumping sessions. You DO NOT have to wash them after every pumping session. I would pump, put them in the fridge, and repeat all day. At the end of the day, I would wash them in hot soapy water or put them in the dishwasher.

-Make sure you have the right size flanges/horns!! This was huge! I needed to move up a size, and once I did, it felt SO much better.

-Try to make your pumping time as relaxing as possible. I usually grab a snack and fill up my water bottle and set up the pump by the computer. I read my email, favorite blogs, whatever.

-In the beginning when I was pumping more often, I would set DD up in the Bumbo or bouncy seat next to me, so I could feed her while I was pumping. When she got older, I used the Jumperoo to keep her entertained.

-I stopped pumping overnight when she started sleeping through the night (about 8 weeks). This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it worked for me.

-Along those lines, in the beginning, I just pumped whenever she ate. So if she was eating every two hours, I was pumping every two hours. I started spacing them out, and around two months, I went to 4 times a day. (*This doesn’t work for everyone, but I did have an abundant supply)

-Pump in the car! This has saved me - kills two birds with one stone. Set it up before you leave and turn it on 20 minutes from your location (or however long you're pumping for). Just put a nursing cover over you while you pump, and no one will know.

-I always massage my breasts while I pump and have never had serious problems with clogged ducts. I also feel like it helps get all the milk out.

-Use the 9oz Gerber bottles for collecting milk. (they are $.99 each, I found them at Target.) They attach to the Medela PISA, and even if you don’t need the bigger size, they rest on your thighs while sitting, so your hands are free to use the computer.

-Speaking of hands free, there are several “hands free” bras you can buy. I recommend using this when driving. Some women have also cut holes in an old sports bra to make a hands free bra.

-Medela customer service is awesome! They sent me new tubing for free after I explained the condensation had caused mold to grow. (as a side note, allow the pump to run for several minutes after you’ve finished pumping to allow the condensation to get out)

-A BF baby’s intake will not continuously go up and up like a formula fed baby. When Edie was about 6 weeks, she started taking 6 ounces at each feeding. We’ve never increased that, although she only takes 3 bottles a day now. (so at one point, she was taking 6, 6oz bottles, and now she takes 3, 6oz bottles)

-I follow the rule of 8s for breastmilk storage: 8 hours at room temperature, 8 days in the fridge, and 8 months in the freezer. (and I’m generous with those numbers) **And I since read that it can be up to a year in a deep freezer.

-There are LOTS of things you can do to try to increase supply, but I just make sure I drink plenty of water and have added more oatmeal into my diet. If supply becomes an issue, there are other things you can use, including supplements and prescription medications.

~originally posted on TheBump.com breastfeeding boards, used with permission from AWBeth

My Non-schedule Schedule - Rachel

Many of the EPers I have come across have a specific schedule they pump by. However, that has never worked for me. I began pumping every 3 hours (8 x per day). I would feed her and then pump right afterward. (My supply was greater than her demand from the beginning, so I am able to pump after she eats instead of before.) I didn't pay attention to the time I pumped, I just pumped after she was fed. After about 2 weeks I began holding her and cuddling with her after she ate, pushing my pump sessions further back. I started pumping every 3-4 hours during the day and continued to pump with her feeds at night. At this point I was pumping 5-7 oz per session.
Once my body began to feel back to normal after my labor and delivery, I had an increased desire to get out of the house and have some adult interaction. With increased outings, I started testing the limits of how long I could go between pump sessions. I quickly realized I could go 4-5 hours and continue to maintain my supply. With this new schedule I was pumping about 7-10 oz per session.

Hannah is now just shy of 3 months and I am usually pumping 5 times/day. I have no set times, just whenever it fits into my schedule. Sometimes I will pump after 4 hours, sometimes after 7 hours. I return to work next week and plan to maintain my non-schedule schedule. Being a nurse, my breaks come whenever they come. I will not be able to say "it is 10 o'clock time for me to pump." I plan to pump when I wake up before work, 3 times at work (12 hour days), and then when I get home before bed.
I am a very relaxed EPer. I have never kept track of exactly how much I am pumping. I know that I continue to make more than Hannah demands by about 6-10 oz per day. I have 450-500 oz of BM in the freezer. My ultimate goal is to get Hannah to 1 year on BM. If my supply maintains with my return to work, then I plan to drop to 2 pump sessions at work when she hits 5 months. I hope to get a freezer stash adequate enough to stop pumping before we hit that year mark.

Some people find they need the consistency of a set schedule. That just has never worked for me. I plan my pump sessions around my day, not my day around my pump sessions. There are a million different ways to be an EPer, find out what works for you. There is no wrong way way.

Pumping Challenges: Living Arrangements - Ixelle

It really takes a special kind of perseverance to pump exclusively, naturally there are many challenges along the way. Here is one of my struggles.

Living arrangements.

Although my husband and I have a place of our own, we rent out a room to a friend of ours and also have been providing a room for my brother to stay. So it's always been a house full of guys and lil ol me. This puts a big restriction on where I can pump in my own house. For the first 3 months I was pumping in Thumpers room, and between pumping, skin to skin time and trying to get nursing going, I was basically a prisoner in the nursery. Once I went hands-free I started trying things like feeding Thumper, or changing him while I pumped, or sorting his laundry. For 2 months I re-read some of my favorite books (and would usually look up at the clock and realize that I pumped for too long). For right now I see my pumping time as 'me' time where I can do things that I want to do whether it's read, do chores, spend time with Thumper or even type up blog posts. Thinking about something other than pumping helps tremendously. In the past week, I moved the pump into the master bedroom (which has been in dire need of a good cleaning) and have been able to fold laundry, use my laptop to access the internet instead of just my phone, clean a little, relax a little. Just having a change of scenery is great for my mental state while pumping. I don't have to look around and be reminded of only baby things. This also means that I can use the master bathroom instead of having to worry about covering up to go use the bathroom or go wash up. I'm still cautiously exploring other places to pump and have successfully pumped in the car once (not while driving), and will need to do that again this weekend. A change in scenery makes quite a difference when you are getting frustrated or burnt out with pumping.

My pumping schedule through 6 months - Heather

One of the most common questions I see from new EPers on message boards and forums is "When do you pump?" It is often followed up by "...and for how long...and when can I drop a session...and what will happen to my supply?" While everyone's experience is different, hearing those experiences and their outcomes can help an EPer make their own decision on pumping schedules. Some of our Pumping Moms included their schedules in their "Intro" posts, and some others (like me) will offer an entire post about pumping schedules.

Most online resources (Kellymom, iVillage forums - see links at right) recommend pumping for 120 minutes a day total, and I loosely followed that guideline. At the hospital, the lactation consultant started me pumping every 3 hours around the clock for 15 minutes per session, a total of 8X a day and 120 minutes.

I had a severe problem with sleep deprivation the first week after going into labor, to the point I was actually hallucinating on the car ride to The Cupcake's first doctor appointment. I realized midway through a conversation with nobody that I was not all there. I went into labor on a Monday night after working all day and being up since about 7am, slept zilch that night, and got only a few 15 minute naps in the next two days of my hospital stay. Even when I sent TC to the nursery she was brought back to try feeding on demand any time she showed a hunger cue, and we've already discussed how frustrating those first attempts were. The first night home was perhaps the most stressful of my life so there was NO chance of sleep there...I absolutely understand now how sleep deprivation can be used as torture. Though my dear husband and mother tried to offer me some respite by taking on TC's care, I didn't really get over it for quite a long time.

This is a long way of explaining that something had to give, and I dropped the 3am pumping session at 1 month. I still had to feed The Cupcake every 2-3 hours, but it was much easier to give a bottle than try to pump also. If perchance she was sleeping at that point, I could get back to sleep quicker myself. I had built up 3-4 days of "fresh" milk in the refrigerator and a few hundred ounces in the freezer already. So for the next month I pumped 7X a day for about 17 minutes, which was still around 120 minutes per day. She was eating about 42 oz per day, which is way off the charts at any of the sites I mentioned above, but the pediatrician didn't bat an eye and she was "wasting" a lot with reflux. While I didn't keep track, looking back I estimate I was making upwards of 50 oz per day at that point

At 2 months I cut down to 5X a day for 20 minutes each session, 6, 10, 2, 6, & 10. Still covered what she ate + added to the freezer every day. My output was not noticeably different. I headed back to work just before 3 months, though I didn't experience the drop many women do when returning to work. I actually found pumping at work to be relaxing, it was certainly much easier than pumping at home and trying to entertain The Cupcake at the same time, plus it was a nice twice daily break from a less than exciting job :)

Once I was certain I wasn't going to have the back to work crash, I started itching to drop another session. While I didn't mind pumping at work, I had cut down to part time soon after returning, and on my days as a stay at home mom I felt greatly restricted by my pumping schedule and it was hard to leave the house or get anything accomplished. So at 3 1/2 months I changed my schedule again so that I pumped 4X a day, roughly 6am, noon, 5pm, and 10pm. 25 minutes per session, a little longer in the morning as my let down seemed to drag a bit. At this point I was still replacing everything TC ate in a day, and freezing 4-8oz additional, so again, around 45-50 oz per day. My deep freezer was full. I had farmed out storage of 2 large boxes, about 400 oz to my parents' house, and had yet to touch any of the frozen milk. At this point I had pretty much decided that 6 months was my goal, so I held my breath and took another big leap...

At 4 1/2 months I cut down to pumping 3X a day, every 8 hours. 30 minutes per session.
For the first two weeks everything was still great, I was getting 15 oz per session so I continued to produce everything my kid ate in a day and occasionally froze 4 oz here and there. I had a few more clogged ducts than the previous times I'd cut down, but that was to be expected when going 8 hours between sessions, I figured my body would adjust...

And then at about 5 months, my supply tanked.

TANKED. I lost 1/3 of my daily production. And TC seemed exceptionally hungry, despite the addition of rice cereal to her diet. In the next 2 weeks she consumed everything I was making daily plus a big chunk of the fresh reserves from the refrigerator, so all of a sudden my buffer was gone!

The Cupcake is just a few days away from 6 months old, and I started defrosting frozen milk for the first time tonight. Even if I completely stopped pumping TODAY, there's over a month of milk in the freezer...so we should be okay...but I feel extremely anxious. I'm definitely ready to "get my life back" and stop being a slave to my pump...my family is nothing but supportive...but I can't help but feel nervous about this next big step.




Wish me luck!

Rachel, Hannah, and our Milk Machine: An Introduction

Hi, my name is Rachel. My daughter Hannah was born on April 5, 2011. Being an RN in labor and delivery, I knew that I wanted to breastfeed and I also was very familiar with the struggles that accompany breastfeeding. I always had a feeling that BFing wouldn't go well for us, but I really wanted to give it a try. We had latch issues from the very beginning. Hannah preferred her upper lip to my nipple, making it very difficult to get her to latch. With the help of an LC, we were eventually able to get her well latched and she did ok for about a day. However, my milk came in full force on day 3, and she would no longer latch. I tried to pump and was only able to get 1 ml. At her first pedi appointment her weight had dropped from 7 lb 12 oz to 6 lb 13 oz. We were told to continue to try BFing, but we were to give her 1-2 oz of formula every 3 hours.
I called my friend (an LC) and she came over to the house right after the appt to see what she could do. Hannah still wouldn't latch, so we tried the pump again. At this point I was too engorged for the pump to even effectively draw out the milk. She showed me how to hand express and I was able to get 1 oz out of just 1 side. We syringe fed her that and planned to continue to hand express/pump until my breasts would soften enough for her to latch again. I hand expressed every 3 hours for 2 days. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I was exhausted, my boobs hurt, and my baby had lost too much weight. I realized very quickly that the syringe feeding was not something I could handle at that time and we started giving her the expressed milk in a bottle. Once the engorgement was under control, I began trying to put her back to the breast. I tried without a nipple shield, I tried with a nipple shield. Occasionally she would latch and suck, but mostly she just screamed. I have a very strong letdown and she just couldn't handle it. I knew that breastmilk was the best thing for her, but I also knew that her and I both crying every time I she tried to breastfeed wasn't good for anyone. It was then that I made the decision to EP. She was still going to get the good stuff, and her and I were going to be much happier.

Why it works for us:
A lot of people I have come across think pumping is the devil. To be honest, I have come to enjoy EPing. Not the pumping itself, but it really works in my life. At this point, I am only pumping 5 times a day. I am pumping 10-14 oz per session. While I somewhat have to schedule my life around pumping, it really hasn't been that difficult for me. I love that I can just pack a bottle for her and don't have to worry about feeding her on the go. The very best part has been the opportunity it has given my husband to bond with her. He feeds her whenever he is able to and it really makes him feel connected to her. I think he would have felt really disconnected in the beginning if he wouldn't have had that opportunity. This has also been a big key in me keeping my sanity. Someone else can feed her while I nap. Someone else can feed her so I can sleep through the night. (I am now able to go 7-8 hours at night without pumping.) I think my postpartum experience would have been a lot different if it were solely up to me to feed her.
When the time comes for baby #2, I will absolutely try breastfeeding again, but if it doesn't work out I know that EPing is an excellent option for my family.

My pumping must haves:
- I have a Hygeia Enjoye breastpump. I love it. It is small and easy to use. It is the only closed system pump on the market.
- Hands-free pumping bra. I have the Simple Wishes bra and it might just be my best friend

Heather and The Cupcake...an Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is Heather. I usually blog over at Heathers Creative Life, where I share craft and party ideas, and cool things I've made - including my 5 month old daughter, AKA "The Cupcake". While I've been kicking around the idea of talking about my EP life for a while (milk still counts as a cool thing I've created, right?), I'm just not sure how much that crowd wants to know about my boobs, so this is a great opportunity and I'm hoping to contribute several posts here. While I never intended to EP, it has actually worked out great for my family and I don't regret it one bit.

My story of why I ended up pumping is a pretty familiar one to many EP moms:

My daughter didn't eat. She was too sleepy for her first few days in the world, and despite undressing, tickling, and trying every other distraction technique the nurses showed me, she just wasn't into it. We kept trying every few hours, including with a nipple shield and eventually they had me pump. Those first couple days are kind of jumbled together in my memory, but each new nurse/doctor/lactation consultant brought in different ideas about what should and should definitely NOT be done - and everything contradicted. Mostly I remember being very frustrated and anxious.

As a first time parent, when someone in the hospital tells you your baby is losing too much weight, you tend to get a little freaked out. This in no way helps the situation.

At one point on the 2nd day she latched on and seemed to go to town...for 2 hours. She chewed and chewed until I was raw and weeping, but I endured it because I thought my baby was wasting away. Then she went back to not wanting to latch again, and still wanted to sleep. We tried syringe feeding the pumped milk/colostrum, which was when I realized I was losing my mind. I was exhausted from 36+ hours without sleep, not to mention the trauma of labor, and here I was trying to pour this liquid gold into my baby's mouth. She, of course, had no idea how to swallow and just let it all leak out. It was a thousand times more frustrating than the cliche of herding cats, and the stakes were much higher. She cried, I cried...At one point in between droplets we tried giving her a pacifier to stimulate the sucking reflex and encourage swallowing...but wait, introducing other nipples was what we were trying to avoid with syringe feeding, right? Somehow in my fog I recognized the lunacy and just called an end to the whole agonizing process. We slapped a nipple on the bottle and she took it like a champ. A million pounds were lifted from my shoulders as she sucked it down with ease, and we've really never looked back.

At our weight check the next day our pediatrician announced "She is perfect!" and brushed aside my worries about her nutrition. He explained that all babies lose weight early on, and that they bring in those who lost more than 10% for a weight check as a precaution, but really I need not worry. She was perfectly healthy and doing great. She had already begun to gain back her early losses which he said was quite impressive, and by 2 weeks she was well over birth weight again.

My milk came in quickly and with a vengeance, I was able to get 4 days of bottles into the refrigerator and start building a freezer stash, all while still producing her daily needs. I knew exactly how much she was eating, which was so reassuring for me that it alone was enough to keep me pumping (and I tracked each bottle by writing it down for the first month or so, just to be sure).

The LC's, doctors, and nurses all instructed me to keep trying to get The Cupcake to take meals straight from the tap, but she was never interested. Truthfully, pumping worked out really well for my lifestyle and personality so I didn't try all that hard to force it. I was able to set a schedule, maybe the only thing in my life at that point that ran like clockwork, while still feeding TC on demand. I was able to control the suction and latch of my pump, something I couldn't do with my infant, and though I was still dealing with the pain from her hospital chew-a-thon (important note: you can totally bite without teeth. That hard little gum ridge they come with is plenty painful when tender body parts are smashed between it), eventually my nipples healed.

In my pre-birth breastfeeding class and in the countless books I'd read prior to trying, I kept hearing that "breastfeeding doesn't hurt if you are doing it right." Well, that's great - but what if MY BABY wasn't doing it right? I think this attitude is actually extremely detrimental to new mothers, and coupled with the variation and contradiction in advice each different "expert" gave me in the hospital, only serves to prove how subjective the field of breastfeeding really is. Everyone had different opinions, but presented them as hard core facts, which left me confused, frustrated and skeptical.

At 5 1/2 months, my beautiful little girl is tipping the scales at 16 1/2 lbs, and I no longer worry if she is getting enough to eat. She LOVES her bottle, and because of that she can be comforted by numerous caregivers, something which really helped me be able to get out and about once in a while and transition back to work without too much trouble. She's still getting breast milk, and as the fist baby (and first grand baby on my side) I have zero worries that we are missing any bonding time (I swear I held her for the first 6 weeks straight). In addition, while she still eats every 2-3 hours, I've been able to cut back on my pumping sessions so it is less of a burden and we have a little more freedom in our schedule, and even though she still wakes several times a night it is less of an interruption and both of us can go back to sleep quickly.

I never would have thought to choose exclusively pumping, and outside of my family I have not found much support for it - but I'm almost to my goal of pumping for 6 months (with plenty in the freezer after that), and the piece of mind it has given me was worth all of the bottle washing and then some :)

Pumping Vocabulary & Acronyms - Medela PISA

If you've been searching the blogosphere for information on pumping, chances are you've come across a few terms or abbreviations that you may or may not have figured out. Here are a few frequently used words and phrases relating to the Medela PISA:

First, how about PISA:
Pump In Style Advanced - Medela's everyday use double electric pump. It is widely available and very popular. There are several varieties differentiated by the type of bag they come in - for example, this is the shoulder bag:



The little yellow cube in the lower right with the tubing coming out of it is the actual pump, it is built in to the bag (though removable, you wouldn't usually operate it outside of the bag).

The predecessor to the PISA was the Pump In Style (PIS) - pretty similar, but a little bulkier and heavier.

Membranes: these are the tiny white rubber circles that seem unimportant until you tear or bend one, then you realize they have a HUGE effect on the suction!

The membranes plug in to the

Valves: These are yellow hard plastic and generally come attached to connectors, so you may not even know they are removable (I had no idea)



If you have a sudden loss of suction, it's often because you've bent or torn one of these tiny membranes, or cracked the valves (or tucked your bra under the edge of the breast shield).

Breast shield: AKA funnels or cones. The PISA kit comes with 2 piece breast shields that are the funnel and the connector (and the valve & membrane are in the connector), but when you buy replacement pieces they often sell them as a single piece like this:



Breast shields come in multiple sizes. The 24mm is the most common, and the PISA kits come with that & the larger 27mm. They also make 21mm shields. For the 2 piece shields, any size will fit on the connectors, and the funnel part can actually be used as a funnel if you are filling freezer bags - remove the connector, put the spout end into the bag, and pour into the wide end.

What other pumping terms & acronyms are you running across?

All photos from Medela

Ixelle and Thumper...an Introduction

I'm the mom (Ixelle) of an almost 4 month old baby boy (Thumper), and after much pain and tears I made the decision to pump exclusively to supply milk for him. I always expected to breastfeed my baby, especially being a stay at home mom I never intended to have to pump except to relieve engorgement. When my baby was born, he wouldn't latch at all and had no interest in the breast. When we would try to encourage him to latch with the help of nurses and LCs, he hated it and would scream and scream. It was urgent that he be able to eat since he was jaundiced enough to keep him in the hospital a few extra days but not quite enough for them to admit him to the nicu. Since he was not nursing, I started pumping the day after he was born. The LC in postpartum worked with us extensively during our hospital stay and finally got baby to take the nipple shield, which he would do only after at least 20 minutes of hysterical screaming. We also had to set up a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS) and mixed what little I could pump out with formula and he would rarely take more than 2 ml at a feeding. The LC arranged for us to rent a hospital-grade pump after we went home.

After we were finally discharged, we had to bring him back to the hospital the next 3 days for appointments (and blood draws) to check on his bilirubin levels. At the first appointment, we met with another LC who was shocked at how he just would not take the breast, even when she was pouring milk into his mouth next to the nipple shield. She advised us to get rid of the SNS since it was causing us so much stress, and to give baby a bottle as long as we weren't opposed to it. I had no problems, I just wanted to be able to feed my baby. He took the bottle like a champ and was finally getting some milk into his system (at this point my milk had already come in and I was making enough for him). We bottle-fed him while trying to offer the breast whenever we could and doing a ton of skin to skin (kangaroo care).

It was 2 weeks of LC visits before baby would take the nipple shield without screaming, and another week before he would do it consistently at home. It was going well, and baby even nursed without the shield three times! Then we got thrush. Between baby squirming and fighting me at the breast and the shooting pain in my nipple when he nursed, breastfeeding was a miserable experience but I couldn't imagine quitting. On top of that, a tenant and my brother are living with us, so between trying to nurse and pumping I felt like a prisoner in the dungeon of my baby's room. As time passed I was less and less motivated to nurse and eventually stopped offering him the breast altogether and was purely bottle-feeding him breast milk.

Right before he was 3 months old I decided to give nursing another try, I had been getting slightly more sleep and was more accustomed to taking care of a baby daily and thought that I would be in a good state of mind to try again. I decided to try nursing him on the nipple shield at least one feeding per day and see where that led me. I did that for 2 days and was immediately frustrated again with nursing a squirming, kicking baby. I thought about it and realized that I wasn't trying to nurse for the benefit of my baby, it was just for my convenience and appearance. Baby was already getting the best nutrition he could have, he was just getting it from a bottle. After another few days of praying and contemplating I officially made the decision to exclusively pump. It was so heart breaking to 'give up' after all the time, effort, tears I put into trying to get my baby to nurse. Once I made the decision, I was able to move on with my life. I bought a hands-free pumping bra and switched baby back to regular bottles (we had been using Breastflow bottles in an effort to get him to nurse without a nipple shield, and they were hard to wash). At this point pumping became downright enjoyable. I played games on my phone or called up friends while I pumped and it gave me time to sit and relax a few times a day. I was able to prop baby up on my Boppy and feed him or change his diaper while pumping.
I wasn't passionate about EPing until I looked online for resources and realized how slim the pickings are yet how many women actually EP. Let's face it, it takes a real woman to pump exclusively to feed her baby! I'm hoping to continue through one year. If my story can in any way help or encourage someone else who wants the best for their baby and is willing to spend weeks of her life tied to a pump to get it then it all becomes worth it. Currently I am applying to donate milk since I have a nice oversupply and I desperately need to reclaim my freezer space.
I have been pumping for almost 4 months, I use the Medela PISA, Simple Wishes hands-free bra and Playtex VentAire Advanced bottles.

I pump for 20 minutes at a time at 7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm, 11pm and then around 3am when baby wakes up.

Tips:

Hands-free is the only way to EP
Refrigerate your pump parts instead of washing them every time you pump, and then you can just wash them once a day