leauge was ok but I did not find a lot of comfort in can't you stay at home longer? Bills, and a boss who wanted to ship me to the night shift.....I had to go back. It was so painful to leave my baby with a sitter. I had no family to watch her. I was a single parent of two boys. A very supportive MD at work suggested to have her brought to me once a shift. I became the nursing nurse. Others who had their babies began to do the same. I used two Large medela pumps at the same time and fed her only my milk. I slept with her. I fed her when I came home at night. I spent the weekends just taking care of my kids. I breast fed her for three years. She is very bright and beautiful. It was a very special time of my life. I now help other women to overcome the obstacles and make some very special memories of their own.
Lori Nolan RNC, Lactation Educator
Milk Momma to Skye and David
I've just linked to your site while surfing around for 'breastfeeding' information. I'm a working mom of a BEAUTIFUL 8 mth old daughter who has NEVER had formula! Breastfeeding isn't so much a feeding 'choice' for us ... it's more or less just a 'given'. Why would i feed her something artificial or infereior, when i can give her whats absolutely best for her tiny system. (Though i don't think of formula as 'poison' either ... just not what i want for my baby.)
Because of lack of support, and lack of breastfeeding education and experience on my part, I gradually weaned my son (now almost 7 yrs old) to formula shortly after returning to work. I honestly believe that i can attribute much of my improved success with working and breastfeeding this time around to all the wonderful breastfeeding information and support on the web. I especially enjoy the sharing of ideas among breastfeeding moms on various web sites and message boards.
Anyway, i look forward to exploring your site and reading EVERY word of it!!! In the meantime, if you have time ... feel free to drop by the Breastfeeding Support Board at StorkNet and post a link to your site under the "returning to work" topic ... and anywhere else that it fits. I'm the breastfeeding support "moderator" and i'd love for you to share your experience with our community. http://www.storknet.org/ (Just follow the links to the message boards)
Milk momma to Morgan 3, and Erin 3 mos
My first breastfeeding experience did not work out due to a number of reasons. I allowed too many interuptions, did not get help when things went wrong, and I was so sleep deprived I could not think straight. Morgan turned out OK nonetheless. She is a great toddler with an awesome personality and she is the best big sister to Erin. Now with Erin, I got help with a LC when I got engorged and discouraged and she taught me how to lay down and nurse. Than has been my saving grace. Erin is now 3 1/2 mos and we are breastfeeding great. I went back to work when she was 10 weeks old. I worked only a few days for two weeks and then went almost full time. I work 6-8 hours 5 days a week. I started Erin on a bottle at 8 weeks and she almost wouldn't take one. It took two weeks of trying. I use the NUK nipples and she does fine. I have a Medela Lactina electric plus rental, I pump about every three hours a day at work and before I go to bed. I have only a constant reserve of 4 or 5 bottles. I know I should have more but I don't like to pump when I am home with her. She gets fresh day before milk Tues - Fri and mostly frozen milk on Mon from Fri and the weekend. Erin sleeps in her bed next to mine till about 2 or 3 then usually sleeps with me rest of nite. When I first went back to work she nite nursed ALL nite for two weeks, co-sleeping has kept me sane. I kind of miss it now. Erin still takes only 4 to 5 Oz. a feeding in her bottles every 3 or 4 hours. I nurse her before work and after. It has worked out well and we plan to keep it up as long as she wants. I am proof if it doesn't work the first time it can the second. Erin was 9lb. 9 oz. at birth and is already 15lb. 15oz!!!! Breastfeeding is amazing!!!
Milk momma to Ryan
Ryan was born via an emergency c-section on Wednesday. He had additional complications & was air-lifted to another hospital within hours of his birth. I did not get to see him until Saturday (when they finally let me out of the hospital). And I'd just like to reassure all moms & future moms that you do *not* have to hold your infant within an hour of birth to bond or to have a good nursing relationship. I'm sure it probably helps, but it is not a requirement & do not let die-hards make you feel terrible about it.
Ryan had so many tubes going into him that he wasn't even given a bottle & wouldn't have been allowed to nurse even if I had been there. He was fed through an IV. After they removed the tubing from his mouth, he was given a pacifier. During this time (prior to Sat), I was given a pump because I wanted to breast feed when he was able. I pumped every 2 hours (Thurs & Frid), but nothing came out. Adding that stress to the fact that I hadn't been able to see my baby, who just happened to be deathly ill, almost broke me. Luckily, holding my precious baby on Saturday initiated letdown. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me nurse him so I had to continue to pump.
On Sunday, The doctors finally agreed that Ryan was doing well enough to try breast milk. They took some of my expressed milk & gave it to him in a bottle. I wasn't allowed to nurse because they wanted to be able to measure how much he ate & only wanted him to have a small amount to see if his body could handle it. It went so well, that I was allowed to nurse him for the first time about 4 hours later. He had trouble latching on & the frustration was making it hard for me to letdown, so the nurse squirted a little sugar water in the side of his mouth while he was right next to the nipple. It got him to suck & he latched on after about 3 more doses.
From the start, Ryan has had a pacifier, bottle, and breast. He did not suffer any nipple confusion, but he does prefer the flattened orthodontic nipples (Pur, evenflo) and will not drink from a round one. I purchased a Pump-in-Style at the hospital before he was released. I've used it off & on from the time he was 2 weeks old. Letdown is a lot slower with it, but I just have to let myself relax and everything is fine.
I managed to store about 50 oz before I went back to work at 12 weeks. Finding a place to pump at work is a real pain. The bathroom does not have an electric outlet, so I've been borrowing other people's offices. I pump every 3 hours (9, 12, 3) & get about 6 oz. I want to do this for several more months, but I don't know how tolerant my co-workers will be. I store the milk in the breakroom refrigerator. I will say that the pump-in-style bag is so professional & discreet looking that none of the men know what I'm doing & it allows me to carry the stuff to the bathroom (to wash) and to the breakroom (to store) without any embarrassment.
I nurse Ryan after I pick him up from the sitter, he usually has another evening bottle, and then I nurse him during the night & again first thing in the morning. The sitter gives him bottles of expressed milk. He has never had formula & I can think of no foreseable reason why he should in the future.
I originally hoped to nurse for 3 months (for his sake) even I had doubts that I would be able to last that long. Little did I know that I would like it so much. I do give him bottles (he will accept them from me) a lot because I actually feel more close to him that way -- we can look into each others' eyes. But I love the convenience of nursing at night & not having to get up to heat a bottle. I plan on Ryan having breast milk for one year, but I'll probably only nurse him once or twice per day.
I do not nurse in public. I really don't think it's appropriate, but I respect your right to disagree. Some say "it's natural, the baby needs to eat, etc." but a baby also poops & I wouldn't change his diaper at a table in the restaurant. Another reason is that they're my breasts. I wouldn't display them, or even (for those who say you can't 'see' anything) stick my hand under my shirt & scratch an itch on one in public. And finally, I don't do it because (whether right or wrong) it makes some people uncomfortable. And I do believe others' feelings are a valid consideration. Other examples: I don't tell offensive jokes in public, I'm not loud in public places, etc. Again, I have no wish to argue...I just wanted to express my take on the subject.
Another controversial subject...I don't believe that toddlers should nurse, but that's due to my own personal bias not consideration for others.
Hope this information helps. Feel free to write if you want to discuss breastfeeding/pregnancy/mothering concerns.
Milk momma to beth 11-16-96
I have a wonderful boss. That is the main item that helped me continue to breastfeed after returning to work. He provided me with time, the place and the pump. Being the only secretary he has this was kind of a sacrifice.
I originally planned to go back to work when my baby was 3 months old. Well, Beth did not wait for her due date and my boss had a temp until March 1 so I got two extra weeks. : ) I also originally planned to use my Evenflo mini-electric pump. I am glad I found and tried a Pump-in-Style. I never knew what I was missing. I could pump a lot in no time. And that's what I did relatively problem free for over 1 year.
The only real bumps I hit came first when I had a bad stomach bug. My supply plummeted. Thanks to fenugreek and blessed thistle and a lot of nursing, it came back. Needless to say, I started freezing any and all extra then. Luckily it has not happened again. My second bump was weaning from the pump. I cut down from two a day to one a day by slowing getting each pumping closer and closer together until they were one. But that one was hard to drop. I was engorged each day when I picked Beth up. Luckily, she is a great nurser and never even noticed. She'd latch right on and empty them in no time. I still get engorged when I go back to work if I spend more than two days in a row with her.
At 17 months, Beth is going stronger than ever at nursing. Weaning her during the weekdays has not phased her. She still only wants na na when I am around.
MILK mamma to Samuel and Harrison
I am now nursing the second of my two sons. Samuel is three years old. My newest one, Harrison, is three months old. The nursing experience with each one has been completely different from the other. With Samuel, I enjoyed a maternity leave of six months and weaned before returning to work. With Harrison, I was obliged to return to work two weeks after his delivery! In fact, I was back at my law office five days after birth just to catch up on correspondence that was piling up in my absence.
The irony about my nursing experience with Harry is that I never intended to nurse him at all, given that I was obliged to return to work so soon. I thought that breastfeeding would be far too unmanageable and another stressful responsibility in my already hectic life. Fortunately for us both, the nipples on the bottles at the hospital were crappy and Harry was sputtering and gasping as he nursed on them. I couldn't stand to watch him struggle any longer so I popped my own nipple in his mouth. He latched on easily and I was hooked. We've been nursing ever since and I can't imagine stopping anytime soon.
Our nursing sessions have been fundamental in maintaining a healthy and strong mother-child relationship There is nothing I look forward to more than settling back with Harrison for a relaxing feeding. And that prolactin is great...makes all the worries and woes of the workaday world disappear. I never have problem with milk letdown and have always had a healthy milk supply. I know that some others are not so lucky. I would urge every mother who needs to return to work to continue breastfeeding. Your milk will be a way of keeping you close to your loved one and even though it may be a rush to get home every lunchtime and pumping can sometimes be a drag, it still beats all the fuss of formula preparation and bottle-washing.
Milk mamma to Trevor
Milk mama to Mackenzie (17 months and counting)
I was fortunate enough to be able to take 6 months off when my son Mackenzie was born so we had plenty of time to settle into our nursing relationship. We got off to a good breastfeeding start as our doula helped me latch him on within minutes of birth. We went through some early sore nipples, and the fact that I couldn't get him to latch on easily in anything but the football hold for the first month or two (thank goodness I had "The Womanly Art Of Breastfeeding" book which showed this hold!), but all in all breastfeeding was pretty easy for us. He gained like crazy and was 25 pounds by his 6 month checkup, just on breastmilk - I was so proud that my body could sustain and nourish a life like that, I took pictures of him with all of his fat rolls before we introduced solids.
I bought a Medela Pump-In-Style a couple months before I was to head back to work and started getting used to it. I found that I could get a let-down if I pumped on one side while my son nursed on the other. But I couldn't get a letdown if I tried to pump on both sides. This really worried me, but I kept on pumping on one side and nursing on the other, building up my store in the freezer at least. Eventually, my breasts learned to let down for the pump even when I wasn't nursing, so it turned out that this wasn't an issue after all.
The one problem we had is that Mackenzie never EVER wanted to take a bottle of expressed milk. Not from me, not from dad, not in our house or in other houses, not hot, cold, or anything in between, not with any kind of nipple/bottle system on the market (we bought them all!). It was kind of like that book "Green Eggs and Ham". So we came to the conclusion that we would start out by having my husband (who is the primary caretaker during the day when I'm at work) bring him in to work on my lunch hour. Towards this end, I started leaving for a couple hours a day, working up to 4 hours at a time (the amount of time we'd be apart while I was at work). We found that he preferred to just wait 4 hours and nurse from me rather than take anything in a bottle.
I've been very fortunate in that my company and my manager are supportive of breastfeeding/pumping and working. I have my own office, and they installed a lock on the door. I take two 10-minute pumping breaks a day, plus I nurse my son at noon.
After a few weeks back to work, it became apparent that Mackenzie was never going to do the bottle thing, so we stopped trying. Our lunchtime nursing breaks really gave us some time to connect, even though I was away for the rest of the day, so we have kept that up. Since I still needed to pump to keep my supply level throughout the week (he nursed so much on weekends that otherwise I would've been exploding on Monday), I started calling around to the breastmilk banks to see if I could donate my milk. It turns out that most of them had enough donors at that time, and they typically don't like to take milk from mothers with older babies (apparently the milk changes as your baby gets older and has a different balance of proteins, fats, etc.). I was really lucky to find an adoptive family who were interested in using my milk for their baby daughter.
I felt great because I was no longer pouring the precious stuff down the drain, and its been really wonderful to get to know this other family and watch their daughter change and grow, knowing that I have a small part in that as well. I know that wetnursing is not typically done anymore, but I think this kind of informal milk donation goes on more than people would think.
My son is now over 17 months old, and still nursing strong. Especially as a working mother, I feel nursing is a wonderful bond that keeps us close. It's an instant way to reconnect at lunch hour or when I get home. Often when I come through the door, he runs to get the "Nummy Pillow" and brings it to me. Sharing a bed and nursing at night is another way that we get to spend time together being close.
My son is now 19 mo, and still nurses at night to sleep and at 5 am, before I get up. I pumped until he was 16 mo, and gradually stopped pumping over many months by decreasing the amount of time that I pumped, and cutting down to one session a day.
I was very fortunate not to ever have to use formula. I always had alot of milk, which I partly attribute to drinking a gallon of water a day. One thing that helped me at the beginning, was to pump after my sons first nursing session in the am. There is always lots of milk in the morning, and I never had to pump after any other nursings to get my freezer stock before returning to work.
I had so much milk in my freezer, I had to give some to my Mom to store in her freezer. I even called my LLL leader to see if there was a milk bank, as I didn't want to have to throw it out! She put me in touch with another mom who had not been able to nurse her second child, who was having trouble with formula. In return for my good deed, she referred me to a child care provider, who my son has been with for the last year, and I love her!
I have been so fortunate to be able to nurse my son, as we had similar problems in the hospital, emergency c-section, respatory distress, bottles. He suffered from a bad case of nipple confusion, and I ended up pumping the first week and giving him bottles until a Lactation Consultant came to my house and worked with us. We went through 36 hours of hell getting him to forget that bottle, but it was all worth it! Now I feel compelled to help other moms through the difficult first weeks, and through the transition back to work.
Nursing has been the key to allowing me to work, and still maintain a close connection with my son. I never feel guilty leaving him, he enjoys daycare. I relish my nursing time with him now, as he is a very busy toddler and stops for nothing else!
Hope my experiences can lend some additional insight to your page!
Justin gets both breastmilk and formula. I work 3 days a week, he gets a bottle of formula around 9:00, 12:00 and 3:00 everyday (even when I am home) and I nurse him in the morning and evenings. For the first 3 weeks after I started back at work, I tried pumping at work, but I found that it was really hard for me to interrupt my work when I needed to pump, so I just kept working until I got really uncomfortable. I did not like pumping, the only place I could do it was in the bathroom, and I was using a small electric pump that did not work that great. So I gave up. I felt bad about doing it, but now that I don't need to pump when I am at work, I feel so much better. I still get to breastfeed Justin 3 or more times a day and DH gets to give him bottles on the week-ends, so it's not so bad.
Brigitte
Well, it turned out that for me, at least, it just wasn't that hard. I had some nipple soreness, and my breasts leaked a LOT. But Heather figured out how to latch on right away (the second time I nursed her, only an hour or two after she was born), and I had read up a lot on correct positioning and so forth. Plus I think I was just lucky. I didn't get excessively engorged (maybe because of the leaking). The worst thing that I ever had was a plugged duct once, which ached and burned and made me worried that I was going to develop a full-blown infection, but went away with hot compresses and rest.
As far as breastfeeding in public, I'm a very stubborn, opinionated person, and I thought that even if people are uncomfortable with it, IT'S MY BABY'S FOOD, and she has the right to eat when and where she needs to, just like anybody else. I simply didn't make a big production out of it. I had people give me funny looks a few times, and I think my in-laws were a little stunned the first time I nursed Heather in public (but they didn't say anything). But everybody got used to it. You know, for most women and babies, nobody can SEE your breasts. Even if you just wear a loose shirt and don't drape a blanket over the baby, the shirt drapes around the baby, and the baby's head is pretty much covering the "sensitive areas." It helped me to practice sitting on the end of the bed, looking at myself in the dresser mirror -- that's when I realized there really wasn't anything to see. It was the IDEA that I was nursing that I think bothered some people, and that's just tough for them.
(After the baby gets to be 3 months old, they get squirmier and a bit harder to nurse in public. By the time they're 8 or 9 months old, it's really tough -- they're so busy looking around, they forget they have your breast in their mouth, and just pop it out for all to see. As time went on, I was more likely to look for a quiet, darkened room, or nurse in the car. But by then we were nursing less frequently anyway (see below...))
Heather used a pacifier after she was a few weeks old, and I never had a problem with nipple confusion. I *did* wait until nursing was well-established, though. On the other hand, I think we waited a bit too long to offer a bottle, given how well she took to nursing (and what a stubborn, opinionated child she is -- guess it's genetic :-). We gave her expressed milk in a bottle at about 4 weeks, and she absolutely REFUSED it. She just screamed and hollered and spit it out. Eventually, with a great deal of practice and stubbornness on our part, we got her to the point where sometimes she would drink a few ounces for my husband, but once she started at day care (at six months), we *had* to start her on cereal, because she wouldn't drink milk out of a bottle for them at all.
Caroline took a bottle just fine when we offered her one at 3 weeks or so, and we gave her a couple in the week or two after that with no problem. Then we got lazy about giving her bottles, and when we tried again at around 3 months she HATED the thing, and just screamed and howled. She's getting better, though (better than Heather ever was). Some things we found worked for us: the milk must be EXACTLY body temperature, and very fresh (i.e., freshly defrosted; she won't take it if it's been waiting around for her to drink it at all). Also, she needs a lot of eye contact to keep her calm when she's drinking the bottle, and it seems to scare her if the nipple suddenly gets hot, so you have to very gradually let the milk into the nipple so she doesn't freak out before she even starts sucking.
Pumping: With both Heather and Caroline, I went back to work part-time when they were 3 months old (Heather was, and Caroline is, home with my husband on my days off). With Heather, I pumped mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and met them for lunch every day. With Caroline, it's been more flexible -- partly because she's more irregular in her feeding schedule. Sometimes John drops by to let me nurse her, sometimes I swing by home at lunchtime, sometimes I pump.
It took me a while to get the hang of pumping, and the first time I got a real letdown with the pump, and my milk started SHOOTING into the bottle, I thought, "oh, no WONDER I never got more than an ounce before! THIS is what's supposed to happen!" I'd get maybe 4 ounces early on; later, after she was a bit older, I'd get more like 7 or 8. I've been finding this time that I can get a lot more if I wait a bit longer than Caroline would normally go between feedings (2.5-3 hours instead of 2 hours). Otherwise I have trouble getting a letdown. This way I usually get 5 or 6 ounces, and she only drinks 3 or 4 tops. (Since Heather never drank much from a bottle, supply wasn't a huge issue -- it was more to have some extra supply just in case, and to keep my milk flowing when I wasn't nursing.) Also, I can pump not that long before I feed her, and she still seems to get plenty.
I used a Nurture II electric pump (pumps both sides at once, and I figured out how to hold them up with one arm so I could read e-mail while I pumped :-). The battery pumps I borrowed from friends absolutely sucked (not literally, unfortunately).
Biting: Heather tried chomping me with her gums a couple of times when she was around 4 months old. (We thought she must be teething, but she didn't get her first actual tooth until 10 months!!) My self- protective instinct took over -- I yanked her away *hard*, yelled "Ow, that hurts! Cut it out!" She looked at me, and burst into tears. After that she basically didn't do it. Sometimes when she was done nursing and into the "nibbling" hanging-out part of the feeding, she'd get this impish look and try a chomp or two. I learned to just take her off the breast when she was really done nursing. (They can't bite when they're actually nursing, though if they have teeth, they can tickle/scratch you with them.) When she did get teeth, she was old enough to understand a stern "That's not okay."
Letdown: ("letdown" is when your milk starts to flow, which happens a minute or so after the baby starts nursing -- it doesn't mean "depression" in this case :-) For the first week or so, when my milk let down, I would have fairly strong, somewhat painful contractions, but they only lasted for 15 seconds or so. (The hormone that causes letdown is the same hormone that causes labor contractions. This is actually good, because the contractions help your uterus return to its normal size.) After that, I'd feel the letdown as a sort of tingling fullness in my breast. It's really hard to describe. Sometimes, especially if it had been a long time since I nursed (so my breasts were especially full), it would be kind of painful. Having full breasts is a weird feeling, too -- you feel like you really need to nurse a baby. It's sort of like having to go to the bathroom -- you can't describe what having a full bladder feels like, but when you feel it, you KNOW you need to go.
Let's see, what else? Yes, they both really nursed every two hours round the clock for the first couple of months. Fortunately, they're both efficient nursers, and only took 5 or 10 minutes total each time. I think it would be much tougher if you had a marathon nurser who took 45 minutes to finish up. (Heather in particular would keep gently sucking and just sort of hanging on to the nipple for quite a while after she was done actually drinking, but I quickly learned that she wasn't really getting any milk during this period. So if I was in the mood, I'd just let her hang out, and otherwise I'd take her off when she slowed down.)
She started stretching out her nighttime nursings to 3 or 4 hours apart when she was around a few months old. (Caroline was better, with a 6-hour sleep stretch by the time she was 2.5 months or so.) After Heather started on solid foods, she did NOT, contrary to popular belief, start sleeping more. But by that time she was on a reasonable pattern anyway -- she'd generally nurse around 9, go to bed at 10 (I never nursed her to sleep, just because of the way her schedule settled out), wake up around midnight for a late-night nursing just before we went to bed (we arranged our schedule around hers in that sense), sleep until 5:30 or so, nurse again, then fall back asleep in our bed until 8 or 9.
As Heather got older, and ate more, and started drinking cow's milk from a cup (around 9 months, with our ped.'s blessing), she nursed less. (She never had a drop of formula.) We dropped midmorning and midafternoon nursings when she started on solid foods, dropped the lunchtime nursing when she started milk (I was driving over to her day care every day, which was WONDERFUL until she started developing stronger separation anxiety and would scream when I left). Not too long after that we dropped the after-work nursing, since she was eating a fair amount of regular food, and she didn't really need to be nursed twice in the evening. The late-night nursing stayed around probably until she was almost a year old. After that, she was down to just the early morning (5:30ish) nursing, which was perfect for us, because nursing her was a great way to calm her down, keep lying in bed, and get her to go back to sleep (there was no WAY we were going to be getting out of bed at 5:30 -- we are NOT morning people).
Heather never nursed solely for comfort, except that when she was sick she wanted to nurse more often (and I'd let her). (In fact, she was a very fussy baby, and for a while I tried offering her the breast much more often, hoping that it *would* comfort her, but she never wanted to take it except when she was hungry.) Don't know yet with Caroline -- it's hard to distinguish honest hunger and comfort nursing in an infant.
At 14 months, Heather just started sleeping through the early-morning nursing, and that was it. I was a little sad in a way, but also relieved, because I had planned some business trips around then, and it was going to be the first time I went anywhere overnight without her. I was worried that the separation would cause her to wean, which was NOT what I wanted, or that it would be really traumatic on her if I wasn't there for her (and vice versa :-). Hopefully the same thing will happen with Caroline -- I already have plans to go on a choir tour in the summer of '98, when Caroline will be about 17 months old, so I'll wean her before that if she doesn't wean herself.
A few days later I got HUGE - very engorged and we had to decide if I wanted to risk a little pumping (which will increase your milk supply and just make it worse) or to just take the pain. Since I was planning on going back to work I decided to pump. It does relieve engorged breasts, but it really does increase your milk supply. (I will probably do this again this time, since I have to go back to work after 6 weeks and I want a good frozen supply to supplement with) The engorged breasts went away after the second week, and we settled down to a pretty easy time of breastfeeding. She was a great breastfeeder, even right after delivery, the nurses wanted to make a video with her she was so good at it. I know other kids have problems latching on and everything.
I hope the next one doesn't, I wouldn't know what to do.....
I only have one bad experience about breastfeeding in public, I didn't have any qualms about doing it, I just had a light blanket I'd sling over my shoulder and then feed her. It was very discreet and although people probably knew what I was doing no one said anything. Except once.....We were in a resteraunt in Pennsylvania (we were driving to Ohio) and we'd eaten lunch and then she wanted to eat lunch. We were just sitting and relaxing over coffee etc...I put the blanket over my shoulder and proceeded to feed her. The older gentleman was over my ex-husband's shoulder and glared at me the entire time. He was so furious that I would do this, he complained to his wife, who basically just shushed him. I really couldn't understand it. He never saw anything, if you looked at me, I just looked like someone with a weird baby scarf around my shoulder. I figure that this was probably a good experience, because after that it didn't bother me at all to feed in public any more. I knew that I didn't flash anyone, and if they were going to get upset, they were just going to get upset. I have just as much right to sit and enjoy my coffee as much as the next guy, so I figure they can just grit their teeth and bear it. Not very giving of me I know, but I had just gotten out of the car, and if you've tried to breastfeed standing up in the bathroom, you know how uncomfortable that is.....
I was one of the first women to pump in my office, and I stored the milk in the fridge at work. (people are still talking about that) I pumped in the bathroom, again very uncomfortable, I won't do that again. I managed to breastfeed or bottle feed my daughter breastmilk when I wasn't there for about 10 months, and then my daytime supply kind of dried up. I could still feed her in the morning and at night, but the daytime pumping just wasn't enough suction. Brianna basically weaned herself at a year, with a bit of help from me, I'm not planning to do this with this one, this husband is much more understanding about time and the plus's of breastfeeding. I'm hoping to breastfeed for more than a year if it works out. I'm planning on getting an electric breast pump this time, so hopefully this won't happen with this baby. Don't let people bother you. Breasts are there for one purpose and that is to feed our children, and that's what we're using them for. Good luck! I'll be gone for about six weeks, but if anyone has any questions after that, feel free to E-mail me with questions. has any questions after that, feel free to E-mail me with questions. I have a friend who's a lactation consultant, so if I don't know the answer, maybe she will.
Just as an FYI I now have the best of both worlds, my daughter is right across the street, and my office let me split my lunch in 1/2 so I go over twice a day and feed her, the only pumping I have to do is in the morning or evening to make sure we have enough if we want to go out without the baby! Pretty cool!
Kate
Mama to Brianna 2/12/90 (nursed @ 1 year)
Let's see. Yes, the first 2 weeks are kind of painful. That's the only time I actually got any use out of Lamaze breathing!-) You need to make sure the baby latches on well - get as much of the aureole into the baby's mouth as possible. Once the initial suck is over, nursing didn't really hurt - it was just that first attach. Then after a few weeks even the initial suck didn't hurt.
I managed to produce plenty of milk. My kids are living proof that breast size has nothing to do with ability to nurse (I'm normally *ahem* one-size-fits-all but get all the way to a B cup when nursing. And yes, it all goes away when I stop.) Both my kids nursed every 2 hours, I think every 2-3 is normal. My kids are serious spitter-uppers, and that's probably why they could only go 2 hours between feedings. I learned with my first never to nurse in a room with a carpet - too hard to clean. And having a dog makes cleanup much easier:-):-)
I was lucky enough to stay at home for 6 months with both, which is plenty of time to get nursing well established. With my first, I bought a hand-held electric pump and tried to pump at work. I lasted for about a month then gave up. So when he was 7 months old, Alex started getting formula during the day. I continued to nurse him mornings & evenings until he was a year old.
With my second, I rented a Medela Lactina double pump. Much more effective! I had pretty good luck pumping this time and Samantha never had any formula at all. She weaned herself at 13 months; I wanted to continue nursing her but she really wanted no part of it.
I purchased a Medela Punp-In-Style to use when I go back to work after my third, and it works quite well. The motor isn't quite as strong as the Lactina, but I can pump about 6 oz. in 10 minutes and I'm not even using it regularly yet.